The Star Kingdom
by sohna
Summary: In this Star Wars 10th Kingdom crossover, Wolf is convinced he can save Anakin from his fate if he and Virginia can get the traveling mirror to take them to Coruscant. Star Wars fans need no 10th Kingdom knowledge to enjoy this story. NOT Obidala!
1. Chapter 1

Author's Notes: For this story, Star Wars fans do not need to know anything about 10th Kingdom - just think of it as a story about what would happen if someone from our world could go to try save Anakin (assuming they were a werewolf or married to one). 10th Kingdom events do get referred to occasionally in the story, but none of it is necessary to the plot. And you will need a bit of patience because they do not get to the Star Wars galaxy until the 4th chapter. (The 10th Kingdom dimension is a place where our fairy tales are their real history). Incidentally, 10th Kingdom fans will likely be lost if they've never seen Star Wars.

* * *

Virginia woke in the night to hear Wolf crying in the bathroom. She sighed and got out of bed, not as easy as it used to be at almost eight months pregnant. 

"Wolf," she said, tapping on the door. "Wolf!"

She heard him try to hush himself, taking several deep gulps. Finally, he said, his voice only slightly trembling, "Just a moment." She heard the toilet flush, although she doubted he'd used it, then the water ran for a second in the sink as he pretended to wash his hands afterwards. At last he opened the door.

"I'm sorry, Virginia," he said, his voice almost normal. In the dim light of the hallway she couldn't see his reddened eyes, but she knew they were there just the same. "It's all yours now."

She leaned against the doorjamb with her arms folded.

"You were crying in there," she accused him.

"No, I ..." he began, then looked down at the floor, and added, "I can't help it. It's so sad, so tragic, and it was so completely unnecessary! I just c ... c ... can't ..." His voice disintegrated into sobs once more and he buried his face in his hands.

"Wolf, we've had this conversation already, twice," she scolded him. "What is it going to take to convince you it was ONLY a movie? You know, a recorded play? You've seen plays before in the Nine Kingdoms, right?"

"Yes, Virginia, I know what a play is and I know that a movie is just a kind of play," he blubbered. "But this was different. I don't know why, but it was just so real ..."

_Star Wars, real? _she thought sarcastically. They'd seen _Revenge of the Sith_ that evening and she'd regretted it ever since. It wasn't even as if she hadn't warned him it would end tragically - she'd seen the original three even if he hadn't - but there had been nothing to warn her he'd react this badly when they'd watched the videos of the first two in the series. And nothing had been able to console him, not even her telling him the ending to the whole thing, that Anakin finally overcame the dark side and saved his son from dying.

"Did Padme come back?" he'd asked.

"Well, no," she'd had to admit. And he had gone off into another fit of tears.

The Wolf in front of her now in the darkened hallway wiped his eyes and tried to choke out his sobs. "I'm sorry, Virginia, I'm keeping you awake. Let's go back to bed."

_Yes, let's,_ she thought, but as soon as they'd gotten settled, she could feel the bed shaking from the sobs he was trying to squelch. Ordinarily she might not have noticed, but since she'd been pregnant, it felt as if all her senses were on high alert. Idly she wondered if it had anything to do with carrying a half-wolf's child. But she didn't wonder very long; Wolf's agitation was too much of a distraction.

It wasn't as if it were so bad she couldn't have gone right to sleep if she'd wanted to; if she hadn't cared how Wolf felt. But she couldn't stand for him to be so upset, especially about something she should have been able to easily talk him out of. That was what was so maddening about the whole thing - he professed to know perfectly well that it was all make-believe, yet he insisted on acting as if it had all really happened. During the movie, she had understood it, and even for a few moments right afterwards - it was Wolf, after all, and Padme had been pregnant; about at the same stage as Virginia. When he'd carried on long after dinner (it hadn't been bad enough to ruin his appetite, but then she doubted ANYTHING was that bad), she'd finally been able to pry at least one rational explanation out of him: He'd identified far too heavily with Anakin.

"Virginia, that could have been me," he'd told her through his tears.

She'd stared at him, managing not to roll her eyes, but she couldn't keep the sarcasm out of her voice as she'd replied, "Yes, if you had been miraculously conceived without a father, were the object of a prophecy, had the powers of a Jedi Knight, including having clairvoyant dreams, and lived in a galaxy long ago and far away, I suppose it could have been."

_He_ had not stopped himself from rolling his eyes at _her_.

"That's not what I meant, Virginia," he'd told her as if he were speaking to a child. "I meant that if I knew you were going to die, I'd do anything to save you - I'd have been caught the same way he was caught. It wasn't his fault; I can't blame him."

"You'd kill a whole roomful of innocent children?" she'd asked incredulously.

Ominously, he hadn't answered, just looked away.

"Wolf?"

"If I was really convinced it was the only way," he'd said quietly. "I can't live without you, Virginia. I know exactly how he felt."

The skin at the back of her neck had prickled; it wasn't very often she was reminded of his true nature, but this was one of those times. What frightened her more was that she really didn't want him to be any other way. Except, maybe, for that.

"Well, if it ever comes to it, please don't do that," she'd told him.

Of course, after that discussion, she'd expected everything to finally blow over. Usually after a big confession, Wolf would bounce right back. But this time, he hadn't.

"Wolf," she said aloud. He didn't reply. "Wolf, I know you're still awake," she said, and was rewarded when he turned over to face her. "Tell me," she instructed. "I'll try not to interrupt you, but tell me exactly what's on your mind that you can't stop thinking of this. And be specific; don't just say it was 'too real.' Say what you mean."

He inhaled raggedly, but then he still hesitated.

"Well?" she prompted.

"I'm trying to think of how to put it," he said.

"Oh, okay, sorry."

After a moment, he said, "Virginia, when you first came to the Nine Kingdoms, what did you think? I don't mean about wanting to go home; I mean about the Kingdoms. What did you think?"

"What does this have to do with Star Wars?" she asked.

He sighed.

"Please just answer my question - you'll see."

"Well, um ... I thought it was crazy," she offered.

"Could you be more specific?" he asked, parroting her.

She pursed her lips, though he couldn't see it, knowing he'd said it on purpose, but obliged.

"Okay, it was ..." she groped for the words, "... crazy because the history of the Kingdoms are fairy tales."

"Fairy tales here, not there," he pointed out.

"Well, yes."

"So before you ever came to the Kingdoms, as far as you were concerned, it was all make-believe, like a play or a story, and none of it was true so you didn't really have to worry about it or think about the bad things that happened to the people in it since it didn't really happen."

"Ah," she said, enlightened. "Okay, suppose, for argument's sake, that Star Wars really did happen. Did you notice at the beginning of the movie it says, 'A long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away?' Even if we could somehow get to that galaxy, it would be ancient history by now, older than Snow White and Cinderella in the Nine Kingdoms. I wasn't transported to see them; I came to see you, in your time - in the present. We helped Snow White's grandson, not Snow White herself."

"Because Snow White didn't need our help," he said. "Anakin and Padme do."

She sighed, exasperated.

"Say they do. How are we supposed to get there? The mirror only goes to the Nine Kingdoms."

"How do you know? We've never tried to use it to go anywhere else," he said. "Think about it - once you allow that there is more than one dimension, why should you stop with two? There should be an infinite number."

"I don't see how that follows," she said skeptically.

"Okay," he said in a voice of such finality she wondered what could be coming, "Suppose I find a way to get into the Star Wars dimension. Could we help them then? Pleeeeeeeeaaaassse?"

The request brought her up short. On the one hand, she doubted it was possible, so there shouldn't be any harm in letting him try. On the other, she didn't want him spending an unending amount of time trying, either. She settled for a compromise.

"How long are you planning to try finding a way in?" she asked. "Can we put a definite time limit on it? Like, until the baby is born? After that, if you can't find out how, you will drop the subject, quit worrying, and accept that there's nothing you can do?"

He huffed, and twitched for a moment, pawing at his ear. It was clear that he didn't like the time limit - or at least how short it was - but he finally said, "Okay."

"Good," she said, starting to turn over to go back to sleep. But Wolf abruptly bounded out of bed. "What are you doing?" she asked, afraid she already knew the answer.

"I've got to get started!" he exclaimed. "Huff puff, I've only got two months, at the most, to find a way into the Star Wars galaxy and rescue them!"

He started pulling on his pants.

"You can wait until tomorrow!" she cried. "Where are you going?"

"I'm ..." he thought a moment, and then his face fell and he stood up with one leg in his pants and the other out, tail drooping. "I'm sorry - I know you need your sleep - I'm a terrible wolf!" He fell back in the bed, pants still partially on, and turned to her. She saw the glint of his eyes. In a small voice he asked, "Are you too tired to go back to the Kingdoms tonight?"

"Yes, Wolf, I'm too tired to go anywhere now. Go to sleep," she said flatly, then, relenting, added, "We'll go first thing in the morning."

She felt his tail beat the mattress vigorously.

"Oh, thank you, Virginia!" he cried happily, and howled.


	2. Chapter 2

"Star Wars????!!!!!" Tony's grin stretched from ear to ear as he bit his knuckle absently in gleeful anticipation. "No kidding, really, the real thing with lightsabers and spaceships and Darth Vader and ... and ... and Princess Leia in a gold bikini?"

"There was a gold bikini?" asked Wolf hopefully.

"Not yet, Wolf, she hasn't even been born yet where we're going ..." Virginia rolled her eyes at her own words. "What am I saying? There's no way we're really going to go there."

"Well, I don't know, Virginia," her father remonstrated. "We got here, didn't we? That didn't seem very likely, but here we are."

"For which I remain eternally thankful," put in Wendell as he entered the room. "Did I hear you planning to leave already?" he added, not bothering to hide the disappointment in his voice.

"It's a matter of life and death, Wendy," Wolf assured him.

"Good heavens, what happened?" Wendell exclaimed.

Virginia cut in, physically inserting herself between the two men.

"Nothing," she said flatly. "Wolf's just managed to get himself worked up over the plot of a play."

"Oh, I don't know, Virginia ..." her father protested.

"Dad!" she said, clearly wanting him to stop encouraging her impressionable husband.

"What?"

"Oh, it is _not _'just a play,'" Wolf declared, though mostly under his breath. He growled softly.

"I think maybe I should hear the whole story," Wendell suggested, and seated himself.

Virginia started to protest again until she saw Wendell gesture to her to sit next to him, and realized that her father, too, was sitting with rapt attention. She glanced back at Wolf, who, still standing, winked at her, before beginning to speak:

"Long ago, in a faraway land, there lived a beautiful young queen named Padme. She had not long come to her throne and was determined to rule her people fair and justly, but unbeknownst to her or to anyone else, her chief advisor was an evil wizard whose plan was to take over not only her kingdom, but all the kingdoms in the land. To this end he disguised himself and convinced the kingdom's enemies to surround it, intending that the queen, who was no more than fourteen years of age, should rely entirely upon himself for advice. But she surprised him and escaped on a ship disguised as her own handmaiden, with a white wizard and his apprentice whom she had secretly invited to the kingdom ..."

Wolf continued on giving the entire prequel trilogy in that manner, surprising Virginia, who had not realized the entire story could be set on a fairy-tale earth, without any sort of space travel involved. In fact, the telling entranced her so much, she forgot to immediately discount its significance, until she saw Wendell's eyes sparkle.

"Oh, Wendell," she began, "It _is_ a good story, but that's all it is ..."

"Now, Virginia," he retorted indulgently. "Things work differently here in the kingdoms than they do where you come from. Or," he mused almost to himself, "Perhaps they work in tandem ..." She was just about to cut in when he continued, "But!" He looked up at Wolf, his eyes fully focused, "But none of this has any bearing on the real question, which is: What specifically do you hope to accomplish?" He held his hand up against the quick reply on Wolf's lips. "Yes, I know you mean to keep Anakin from falling for this evil sorcerer's lies. But how do you expect to accomplish that? Say you find a way to get to their land. What then? If he's been conditioned since the age of ten to believe this dark wizard is his friend, he's hardly likely to believe the word of a complete stranger that he isn't, wouldn't you think?"

Virginia turned to Wolf with a look of vindication, but her man was having none of it, and fired back a rejoinder, which caused her father to jump in, firmly on Wolf's side. She sat down tiredly, wishing, not for the first time, that Tony had not been present for the discussion. As much as she loved getting to see him, she knew his only reason for entering the debate was that he wanted desperately to personally visit the Star Wars universe. She could just imagine what kind of disaster that would create.

------

In then end, however, both she and Wolf got their way. Since the dwarves were the only ones who really knew exactly how all the mirrors operated (and since Tony was _persona non grata_ with the dwarves after the mirror massacre incident), they arrived in the underground Ninth Kingdom alone, just the two of them, with good King Wendell's letter of request for assistance.

The dwarves' union leader immediately got down to business.

"You say you'd like a traveling mirror re-set to visit a different location?" he asked.

"Well ... er ... yes,." Virginia replied. "If that's possible, of course. We understand that it ..."

"Perfectly possible," the dwarf replied. "A traveling mirror wouldn't be of much use if it only led to one place."

"You see, Virginia?" Wolf declared, "I told you ..."

"You understand the destination we had in mind was in a different dimension entirely?" she pressed, ignoring her husband's outburst. "And different from the Tenth Kingdom dimension too."

The dwarf looked at her steadily.

"Nicholas is our master of traveling mirrors," he said. "You'll have to speak to him about the specific uses and limitations. I'm sure he can set you up with the directions on how to tune it as well." He turned and pointed to his left. "Through that door, down the hallway, past the first two corridors on your right, turn at the third, it's the third door after that. Can't miss it."

"Thank you," said Virginia, getting up to leave. Wolf was already in the hallway by then, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet with excitement, waiting for her.

"Always happy to help a friend of the House of White," the dwarf replied as she left.

Nicholas was a grizzled, ruddy-faced dwarf with a mass of unruly white hair. They found him poring over an enormous tome with a magnifying glass. He looked up as they entered his office.

"We understand you're the resident expert on traveling mirrors," Virginia began politely.

Nicholas looked at her rather blankly.

"Oh, huff puff!" her husband abruptly exclaimed. "We need a mirror re-set so we can rescue someone in a galaxy far away." (Virginia noticed he conveniently left out the "long ago" part.)

The dwarf blinked twice and raised his eyebrows. Carefully, he placed a green ribbon down the center of his tome and slammed the book shut, raising a sizeable cloud of dust. Then, still without speaking, he got up and walked away.

Virginia was just about to protest his rude behavior (no matter how abrupt her husband had been, how could he just ignore them like that?) when the old dwarf drew aside a rough brown curtain at the rear of the room. Behind it was a large bank of hand-cranked moveable shelves. He stared at them a moment, finger tapping his bottom lip, then began to crank. Three shelves went past, then four, then five, six, seven more. There seemed an almost endless number, as if they extended far back into some recess much larger than the room they were in. At last he stopped them and set the brake.

As he pulled the access ladder into place, Virginia stepped closer, fascinated in spite of herself. She could see that the shelves were set with tome after tome, most of them as tall as her arm was long, and all of them dusty and ancient. Then, to her disbelieving ears, she finally heard Nicholas's deep voice as it quietly murmured, "Galaxies, galaxies ..." as he searched among the volumes.

"You're kidding!" she burst out without thinking. "You mean there's really ..."

Nicholas ignored her comment, but turned to them and asked, "You wouldn't know the name of the galaxy in question, would you?"

They looked at each other helplessly.

"Err ... no," Wolf admitted.

"How about a planet, then?" the dwarf pressed. "Wouldn't do to throw you out into deep space, anyway. Wouldn't last very long there."

Virginia looked at Wolf.

"Which one?" she asked. "Naboo? Tatooine? Coruscant? Genosis? Some other one?"

"Coruscant," he replied decisively.

Nicholas nodded and pulled down a heavy tome. Virginia started to help him with it, but something in his glance warned her off. He carried it to the table, pushed the other book aside, and set it down. On its black cover were no words, just the silver-embossed emblem of a spiral galaxy. The dwarf opened the old book carefully and began to page through it, licking his fingers as he went along, staring at the pages through his magnifier. At last he seemed to find the page he wanted, and ran his middle finger down a column of microscopic print. Three-quarters of the way down the page he stopped, transferred the magnifying glass to the hand which held his place, and drew a pencil from behind his ear.

"A25038593CTCHDZLD9230521876433JIEDNEF48T67ETJOEE," he repeated carefully as he copied the digits down on a scrap. When he finished writing, he carefully checked it against the reference in the book, then set the magnifier down and handed the slip of paper to Virginia. "There you go," he said. "This will get you to Coruscant. Once you have the mirror set to that location, you can fine tune it visually to find the specific destination you want."

He closed the book and prepared to put it away. Virginia stood there, numbly holding the piece of paper.

"Umm," she said. "Excuse me, but ..."

He turned to look at her.

"How do we enter this number?" she asked.

Nicholas seemed startled.

"You mean you don't have the key?" he asked, incredulously. "But I thought you regularly used your mirror to travel all the time. You're taking a terrible risk using it with no key."

Virginia and Wolf looked at each other.

"What key?" they both asked in unison.


	3. Chapter 3

The hallway, which was nothing more than an old mineshaft converted for use into office space, was not terribly well-lit. Nevertheless, Nicholas stopped them in it, beside a locked door. The dim glow from the lantern on the wall cast his features into strong, angular shadows.

"What I'm about to show you hasn't yet been announced," he stated, "So I will need your personal guarantees that you will not speak of it to anyone until it has been made public knowledge."

Virginia was about to ask what kind of guarantee he wanted - cash? Her drivers' license? Wolf interrupted her thoughts by simply saying, "I give you my solemn wolf word." The old dwarf nodded in acceptance and turned to her. Now feeling silly for expecting the kind of guarantee required in New York, she nodded, and told him she would not say anything.

Satisfied, Nicholas took a key from his pocket, unlocked the door, and ushered them inside. They stopped and stared at the mirror set up within: It was a brand new traveling mirror, its glass a brilliant, shiny silver, frame gleaming gold with the carving distinctly defined. Seeing it, Virginia suddenly realized by comparison how extremely old the mirror in Wendell's castle must be.

Nicholas cleared his throat.

"With only a single traveling mirror of the original three remaining," he said, carefully not looking Virginia in the eye, "we thought it would be expedient to create a new one against the possibility that one was lost." He did not need to add how certain the dwarves were that the mirror she and Wolf routinely used was about to need replacing. Her father, after all, had been responsible for the loss of one of the three mirrors and now had unlimited access to the surviving one. But Nicholas was continuing, "It was our thought to present this to the both of you as a gift should that happen, with the stipulation that the mirror could not be moved and must be used from this location, of course."

_Of course,_ she thought, _so that Dad can't get anywhere near it. _

"We felt it was the least we could do after your noble actions which saved not only our dear friends in the Fourth Kingdom, but our own rulers as well. I've taken the liberty of showing the mirror to you now as it's possible a critical piece of the one you use could be missing," he concluded, then turned to the mirror. Still in lecture mode, he asked, "You're familiar, of course, with the activation switch ..."

"The circular ornament, yes," Virginia assured him.

He nodded.

"The switch must be in the off position in order to remove the key. This is a safety measure for the mirror itself, as it could be damaged if it were accidentally recalibrated while the portal was open."

He reached up and pressed once on the center of the circular switch. A small sliver set into a groove in the design popped up. As Nicholas plucked it free, Virginia stared at it in awe; it was many times longer than the mirror was thick, nearly six inches long, though it was possibly only a quarter of an inch wide and less that in breadth.

"How ..." she couldn't keep herself from murmuring.

"Oh, it extends back into the space occupied by the portal itself," the dwarf replied in an offhand manner. "Anyhow, this is the key. Are you certain your mirror doesn't have one?"

She looked at Wolf and he looked back at her with a shrug. It was really impossible to say without going back and examining it; the way the key fit into the design of the mirror made it impossible to tell with a casual glance whether it was inserted or not.

"I see you might simply have not known how to operate it," Nicholas observed. "Allow me to show you. Let me see those coordinates I wrote down again."

Virginia handed him the paper wordlessly. He set it down on a shelf where he could easily see it and toggled through the numbers and letters by tapping the distant end of the key with his index finger. It worked in much the same way as Virginia set her digital watch.

After the few moments it took for him to input the long string of digits, he inserted the key back into the mirror. Then he turned to them and sighed deeply.

"This will be the first time the mirror is used," he announced reverently. "Usually we test our mirrors in private, but as the both of you are the intended owners, it seems only fitting that you should be here to witness this momentous event. No traveling mirror has been newly made in the last thousand years."

With that, he bowed his head and gently slid the circle into the 'on' position. The face of the mirror sparkled, turned black, and then displayed a cityscape familiar to Wolf and Virginia - one with vertically layered traffic and impossibly high not-quite-art-deco spires.

"You're kidding!" Virginia exclaimed, staring, her eyes round. "You've got to be kidding!"

"Virginia, look!" Wolf insisted. "It's the Jedi Temple - and it's not burned yet. We're not too late!"

"Wolf ... what ... wait a minute!" she protested. "That can't be real! I mean, Dad and I found Wilhelm Grimm's name carved on a lintel in a cell in Wendell's dungeon. That's fine; I mean, I can buy that, it was a long time ago - I'm sure he used a mirror to get here, just like we did. But how did George Lucas do it? Especially how did he do it if it hasn't all happened yet?"

"Huff puff," Wolf fretted. "Maybe he came through the Nine Kingdoms, Virginia. Does it matter? We can go there and help them!"

"Well," Nicholas began, clearly considering the problem, "He wouldn't have had to come through here. He could have gone straight to Coruscant if magic mirrors exist there."

"That's right!"

"No, Wolf," she said flatly, then elaborated for Nicholas's benefit, "It just isn't the same kind of place as here. I mean, they have a lot of sophisticated technology, yes, but really no more magic than we do in my world."

"What about the Force?" Wolf asked.

"The Force isn't magical, Wolf, it's just a trait some people have, like a sixth sense or blue eyes."

"Really gorgeous blue eyes," he elaborated back to her, staring intently into hers.

"Well, actually most of the mirrors aren't really magical in that sense either," Nicholas interrupted them "They're all called 'magical' because they seem to work 'like magic' but in reality they're simply made possible by the material used in their construction - the extremely quicksilver. The differences in the mirrors' use is determined by the specific recipe for the mirror type, not magic. Except in certain instances, of course, such as the talking mirror Wendell now possesses. That one required the assistance of a witch or warlock in its creation. But most, including the traveling mirrors, do not."

He stopped, apparently surprised by the rapt attention they both gave him, and cleared his throat nervously before continuing, "Anyway, the point is that such a mirror could be created any place the material is available. None are in your world because extremely quicksilver presumably doesn't exist there. We can make them here because it does. Coruscant – well, if you want my opinion (which you may not), Coruscant is quite likely to have a reasonable amount of extremely quicksilver at its disposal, simply because it is a part of a very large galactic civilization. So that even if none occurs on Coruscant itself, the odds are good that it would occur on at least one of the planets known to it."

"Just because no mirrors were in the story doesn't mean they don't exist there, Virginia," Wolf pointed out.

"That's not what I meant, Wolf," she replied. "It's just that ... oh, never mind." None of it really made sense to her, including the fact that she could apparently really visit the Star Wars universe. And if Star Wars then why not some other fictional location, such as ..._ No! Don't go there! Don't think about it!_ If she thought about it any more she was going to get a headache. She looked back at Nicholas, deciding to focus on the pure mechanics involved.

"You mentioned that we were taking a risk using our mirror with no key," she reminded him. "What exactly can happen if it turns out the key really is missing?"

"Oh, it's not the absence of the key from the frame that creates the risk," he explained. "It's just that if you don't have the key, someone else could. If that person were to find the mirror's location while you were using it, they could recalibrate it for a different destination, trapping you in the process."

"Couldn't they do that anyway?" she asked. "I mean, the key would be there in the frame. Or is there some failsafe which prevents it from being removed while the mirror is in use?"

The dwarf shook his shaggy white head.

"No, the mirror isn't that intelligent. Once you've passed the portal it has no idea or concept of being in use. What you should be doing is taking the key with you. In addition to being safer, it would also give you more functionality, incidentally."

He turned the mirror off, removed the key from it once again, and held it up.

"This end twists, like so," he demonstrated, giving the near end a sharp crank. As he did so, the mirror's switch turned by itself, and the skyline of Coruscant once more replaced their shadowy reflections. Then he turned it back, and the mirror shut itself off again. "It works from either side of the portal. Good for keeping animals, insects, and other undesirables from wandering back through from your destination. And, I won't activate it here, but there's also an emergency beacon - you hold in this end and twist three times - in case you're unable to make it back on your own, so a rescue party can be sent in after you."

He looked up as he said this, then continued, "Of course, that will only really be available once you travel from here. With the mirror in Wendell's kingdom it would likely be too late before we could arrive to do you any good."

Virginia nodded dutifully, trying to commit to memory the mechanisms Nicholas had just demonstrated. Wolf, however, had other ideas.

"Huff puff, could we just use this one now?" he asked bluntly.

Virginia glanced up at him in alarm, then hastily at Nicholas, an apology ready. By the look on the old dwarf's face, however, none was necessary. In fact, it was quite obvious from his expression that he was relieved Wolf had brought the subject up.

"It wouldn't have been my place to suggest your traveling from here," he told them, "But I can't deny that I'm happy about your decision. It would be safer, I believe, if you're determined to make the trip."

Something about the way he said it made the hair on Virginia's neck stand up.

"Is there something you know about Coruscant that we don't?" she asked.

"Well, not really," he hedged. "However, the story you told about why you want to go there ... well, it may be nothing, but ..."

"But what?"

"It's distinctly possible that they are using traveling mirrors," he finally said. "And if they are, then it's possible that they could visit here. If they do, it would be nice to be prepared for it."

"So you want us to search for a magic mirror while we're there?" she asked, bewildered. "I mean, I understand why it would be safer to go from here, but you've lost me on how this is going to prepare you for them."

He sighed.

"No," he said, "You wouldn't need to seek a mirror out. If one exists, it will find you."

"What?" she asked, alarmed.

"Yeah, what?" Wolf repeated.

The dwarf gestured at the scene the mirror was showing. The skyline of Coruscant shimmered in sunlight. After a moment, the view angle changed to a different vantage point. Virginia realized it had been doing that on a regular basis since being switched on, though it seemed there were a limited number of such vantage points since she'd seen the scene now being presented before.

"To fine-tune your destination, you can stop on any of the scenes shown. Your exit point will be a nearby location that won't attract undue attention to your arrival. If there is no nearby traveling mirror, that is," he explained. "If a traveling mirror is nearby, it will automatically take precedence as the exit point, and it does not need to be switched on to do this."

"How near is nearby?" Wolf asked.

"That's difficult to say," was the response. "I can tell you what the radius is for one of our mirrors, but for one made by another maker, from a different extremely quicksilver deposit, I don't know. It would have to be on the planet, I'm certain; I'd venture to say even the same city. In this instance, that would be a normal city-sized area, not the entire planet-covered metropolis."

"So you want us to use this to see if we come out by a mirror instead of where we want to?" Virginia asked. "That seems rather far-fetched to me. I mean, if we didn't find this mirror for you, that wouldn't mean it didn't exist."

"True," he admitted, "But the odds are more favorable than you think. You see, the part of the planet you intend to visit is the power center, is it not? I'd assumed so since you're intent on warning a member of a wizard council and a senator against a ruler. They're all roughly in the same location. And magic mirrors do tend to give their owners power. So it's actually more likely that the mirror will be near to where you visit. If one exists on Coruscant at all, that is."

He handed Virginia the key.

"Keep it in a safe place," he advised. She stared at it, then dropped it into her coat pocket.

"Are you ready?" Wolf asked.

"What?" she asked, surprised. "You mean now, as in right now? Wolf, we can't ..."

"Why not?" he asked reasonably. "They need our help."

"But ... well ..." she searched for a reason to delay. "We don't have the right clothes."

"We don't need special clothes," he said reasonably. "There are beings from all over the galaxy, dressed in every way imaginable. Anything will fit right in. Come on. You said if I found a way there we could go."

She had said so. And he had found a way. With great trepidation for everything she knew she must be forgetting to ask about or plan for first, she stepped up to the mirror.

And then they both stepped through.


	4. Chapter 4

The screeching sound of breaking glass and heart-wrenching disorientation was absolutely identical to the mirror journey between Wendell's palace and New York. In fact, it was so identical that Virginia half-expected to step out onto the bare ground of Central Park, and had to remind herself to expect hard pavement. But when they finally stumbled out, it was onto plush, grey tweed carpet in a dust-free room replete with the sharp tang of an ozone emitter, no doubt to keep the air cleansed of the pollutants generated by a planet-covering city.

She looked up as Wolf steadied himself beside her, and they both glanced around, their curiosity turning quickly to alarm. The black lacquered furniture and blood-red walls were too familiar for comfort. They had arrived in Palpatine's office.

Wolf grabbed Virginia by the arms and shoved her unceremoniously behind him, and she was terrified enough to allow it. But only for a moment.

"Wolf ..." she murmured.

"You stay here, Virginia," he whispered. "I'll ..."

"No," she managed to whisper, grabbing him by the arm. "That was _not_ in our deal. Remember?" She did not want to rehash the argument she'd had with him at Wendell's palace the first night they'd gotten there when she'd discovered he intended to save Anakin all by himself (well, because she was pregnant and therefore presumably incapable).

He scrunched his face up "Ooooohhhh ..." he whispered, clearly pained at having had to make the concession.

"Shh!" she ordered, then added pessimistically in a hushed tone, "If he's here, he probably knows we're here already."

"Then why are we still whispering?"

Without answering, she tiptoed to the doorway and peered around the jamb. The floor-to-ceiling windows showed gray light outside with a few hover-vehicles passing and silvery buildings in the distance. But the inner office itself - the one where Mace Windu and the other masters had confronted him (would confront him?) was empty. The thought made her glance involuntarily down at the floor beneath her and she shrank back, realizing that she stood where the three unsuspecting Jedi would fall. She bumped into Wolf.

"What ...?" he began, but she cut him off

"He's not here," she whispered tersely, turning to head back through the connecting chamber to the public office. But what she saw stopped her cold.

In the movie, there had been a creepy wall sculpture hanging in the small lounge - the room where Palpatine had at last revealed his true nature to Anakin. But here - in reality (though Virginia had a hard time thinking of it that way) - it was a large mirror, similar in size and weight (and function, she supposed, as they had been diverted here) to the traveling mirror, but with a frame that, although it never actually moved, seemed to twist and writhe, far more disturbing than its theatrical replacement.

"They do have traveling mirrors," she heard Wolf say in her ear.

They stared at their reflections a moment more, until Virginia remembered the control rod in her pocket. She drew it out and clicked it once to shut off the portal. The oddly framed mirror before them stared blankly back.

Palpatine's public office was equally devoid of life and they hurried across it to the door, which gave onto a (comparatively) small reception area, also thankfully vacant.

"That's odd," Virginia remarked.

"What?"

"No secretary," she elaborated. "This is obviously his secretary's desk - or the receptionist's or whatever it's called here. Whether he's here or not, someone should be here. Maybe several people."

"Huff puff," he exclaimed. "It's a good thing for us they're not!"

"I know, I know," she agreed as they swept across the room to the door. "It's just weird, that's all."

The door gave onto a small vestibule that looked - finally - out into a hallway which curved away from them in both directions, not unusual, given that the building they were in was round, Virginia thought. At random, she turned left and started walking, Wolf just behind her.

They'd gone for quite a distance, past a good number of closed doors and several junctions, without encountering a soul or hearing any sound other than the white noise of the air conditioner, even their own footsteps muted out by the carpet. Virginia was just wondering if the building had been evacuated when they heard the sound of labored breathing from a junction just ahead, and they stopped, waiting.

The being that emerged had a blue head and three funnels, or possibly short tentacles, of varying sizes sprouting from its crown.

"Oh, my!" it exclaimed, giving a loud honk from one of the funnels, all of which were busy huffing and puffing with exertion. "Goodness, excuse me! I'm not as young as I used to be. Can't run around like this anymore. Did I miss the whole thing?"

Virginia and Wolf looked at each other.

"Um ..." Virginia began, then plunged in, "What thing?"

Its eyes bulged, and for a moment, she wondered if they, too, would extend out on stalks, but the creature recovered quickly and replied, "The Jedi rescuing the Chancellor! It was all over the holovid. I don't see how you could have missed it! They were going to land and last I heard the ship was on fire and out of control. Did he make it? Do you know?"

"Oh, absolutely!" Wolf exclaimed. "He's the best star pilot in the galaxy! What a landing!"

Virginia jabbed him in the ribs, hard.

"You don't know that," she said pointedly. To the alien, she added, "We didn't actually see anything. He's just such a great fan of the Jedi, that's all."

The alien regarded her dubiously (at least, she thought it looked dubious. It was difficult to tell since she'd never seen anyone like it before), and stared at Wolf wordlessly, breathing still stentorian.

"You wouldn't know how to get to the landing platform, would you?" she asked, an idea coming to her. "The one the Chancellor is coming in on?"

The eyes shifted back to her as Wolf blurted, "Oh, that's a GREAT idea, Virginia!"

"As a matter of fact, I was headed there myself," the alien admitted. "It's this way."

It started off down the corridor in the direction they'd been headed and they followed, although it was clear that Wolf was unhappy with how slow it was walking. Even as pregnant as Virginia was, she was finding its pace quite slow. But they hadn't gone more than thirty feet before the old alien stopped again, its three head pipes wheezing, and leaned against the wall.

"Are you okay?" Virginia asked, wondering what she could possibly do if it needed some kind of first aid. Not only did she have no idea how to administer it, she had no clue of how to call for emergency help, either. But it merely waved a four-digit hand.

"Just ... just ... old, I'm ... afraid," it told her. "And ... very out ... of shape."

It huffed and puffed a few more minutes, trying to catch its breath while Wolf fidgeted behind her, then pointed down the corridor.

"Down there, the first pod," it said.

She stared at it blankly.

"On the left," it elaborated. "About sixty-five more paces."

"Thank you, sir," Wolf said, bowing slightly and pulling on Virginia's arm.

Reluctantly, she followed, glancing worriedly back at the out-of-breath alien.

"...sixty-four, sixty-five. Here it is," her husband announced, stopping and studying the closed door to their left.

"Are you sure we should have left it? What if it has a heart attack or something?" she asked.

"Gee, Virginia, you're such a soft touch!" he exclaimed. "But how could we help him if he did? Besides, we came to help Anakin and Padme, and we're going to miss them if we stop to help everybody we meet."

He sounded terribly calculating to her, but she had to admit she'd wondered herself what help she could have been. Still, she stared back the way they'd come, but the curve of the corridor hid the old alien from view.

Her husband huffed.

"I need an Artoo," he declared, staring at the buttons and outlets next to the door panel. He looked at her. "Stand back a little bit."

She took a step back, and Wolf slapped the greenish-colored button near the top of the display panel, snatching his hand away with lightning speed. But he'd chosen well; the door whooshed open for them, revealing a familiar-looking hypostile concourse with tiny specks of daylight showing at the opposite end. The air took on a vaguely metallic tang, a clue that the room was open to the outside, though the temperature remained steady.

They headed out, and Virginia had to grab Wolf's arm now, to slow him down to a speed she could manage. But it didn't take them long to discover that the platform was as devoid of life as most of the building had been.

"Are we too early?" Virginia asked hopefully, but Wolf shook his head.

"There were all those people waiting for him, remember?" he said. "All those reporters should be here."

"Well, we can't be too late," she protested. "No one was inside."

They stepped out onto the deck. A plume of black smoke was visible in the distance, behind a line of buildings.

"You don't think they really did crash?" she asked, clutching Wolf's arm.

"Nah," he said, dismissing the idea. Then she felt him stiffen.

"What?" she asked, and then she saw it.

To their right, on the next landing deck over, just barely visible at the curve of the building, a large gathering of people was greeting a newly arrived hover-bus. They were on the wrong platform.


	5. Chapter 5

Getting over to the next platform was not as simple as walking the distance between them; from their vantage point, a single flat deck did not run the circumference of the building. They were forced to negotiate their way down several levels, figuring out how to use the antigrav lifts, and backtracking here and there due to their unfamiliarity with the rotunda's layout. The result was that, by the time they arrived on the platform on which the Jedi and chancellor had landed, it was very nearly deserted. They rushed inside anyway, on the off chance Anakin and Padme had not yet finished their tryst, but the couple was nowhere to be seen.

"Great," muttered Virginia, irritated. "This is starting to remind me of my first trip to the kingdoms, all over again - always just too late from reaching our goal."

"Huff puff, Virginia," Wolf replied in a slightly hurt voice, "If you'd found the mirror then right away, nothing would have turned out the way it did. Wendell might still be a dog, the queen ..." he stopped abruptly.

"... I might not have found my mother," she finished for him, less distressed by the subject than he thought she would be, "and I wouldn't have fallen in love with you. You're right. I shouldn't have used that as an analogy. But it was very frustrating at the time. This ... I don't know. Maybe we _can't_ change what happens."

"I don't know, Virginia," he argued, "We got here, didn't we - even after you pointed out how this all happened 'long ago.' I'd say that demonstrates pretty well that we can help them."

She looked at him dubiously.

"There's a lot missing from that chain of logic," she pointed out.

"Huff puff, just because we missed them this time doesn't mean it's hopeless," he declared airily. "It probably had to happen this way; he didn't know she was pregnant until he met her here today. He wouldn't know what we were talking about until he at least has the nightmare about it."

She sighed heavily.

"So, you're saying we might as well give up until tomorrow?" she asked. "Or next week? Or however long it takes him to have the nightmare? Do we even know how long that is?"

"It'll happen tonight."

"And how do you know that?"

"The whole movie took place in nine days."

"Nine days?"

"Uh huh."

"How do you know?"

"I read it on the Star Wars website."

She looked at him as if he'd suddenly grown a third eyeball and shook her head. "Okay, so it'll happen tonight. What's your great plan?"

He glanced around, surveying the traffic speeding by.

"We could tell Obi-Wan instead," he suggested. "The major problem is that the Jedi don't know about ..." he stopped speaking and jerked his head in the direction of the building's interior.

"Didn't he go back to the Jedi temple?" she asked. "How do we get there? We're not exactly brimming with local cash."

"Huff puff, Virginia, wolfies don't need cash," he reminded her.

She glared at him.

"I know you don't like me to do this, Virginia," he admitted as he stepped to the edge of the platform, "But it's for a good cause. A very good cause."

He waved his hand out toward the traffic in the manner he'd learned to use in New York to hail a cab. To Virginia's astonishment, one of the small buses actually pulled over for him and the door opened. But they both froze in surprise when they saw there was no driver.

"Now what?" she asked him, and started to walk away, but he remained rooted to the spot, staring confoundedly at the empty bus. "Wolf?"

He glanced at her with a pained look on his face and scratched nervously at his ear.

"Please enter or stand clear," a tinny voice announced from a speaker somewhere in the bus's interior.

"We should have expected this, Wolf," she said.

"Doors closing," the voice continued, but this time a female voice behind them cut in.

"Wait!" it exclaimed. "Excuse me."

They turned to see a middle-aged blue-skinned Twi'lek in a long green robe push past them, warding off the closing doors with her outstretched hand.

"You really shouldn't block the door," she admonished them. "Why did you hail a taxi if you didn't want one?"

At her question, Wolf suddenly smiled, his features taking on a predatory look - from Virginia's point of view, anyway. The Twi'lek never saw it coming.

"We realized we don't have any money to pay for the ride," he said truthfully, and then his eyes flashed. "Actually, we don't have any money at all, and we're on a mission of utmost importance for the Republic." _Flash, Flash._

She stared at him, mesmerized, her mouth forming an 'o,' and her fingers dropped three coins into a fare box on what Virginia supposed was the dashboard. "I couldn't do less than pay for your fares, in that case," she told them breathlessly. As they boarded, she asked, "I am a representative from my planet. May I ask what the mission entails?"

Wolf lowered his voice to a whisper as the taxi lifted off. "It's top secret," he said. "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you."

She looked slightly shocked, then laughed nervously at the joke. But she didn't press the point.

By the time they arrived at the main entrance to the Jedi temple fifteen minutes later, Wolf had managed to pry 1500 galactic credits out of the woman, having convinced her she'd helped with a noble cause. Virginia stared at him dubiously, not liking it that he'd resorted to using Persuasion, but glad to have the money all the same. He looked down at her contritely, knowing she disapproved.

"But Virginia," he excused himself, "I didn't lie to her. Not once. If we don't succeed, the Republic will fall. If that isn't important, I don't know what is."

"Nevermind, Wolf," she said. "We had to have the money, and I can't honestly say I can think of any legal way to get it in the short time we're going to be here."

He smiled happily.

"Just don't get used to doing that all the time," she warned as they walked up the steps to the temple entrance.

------

The colossal door was shut fast, and to their rapidly rising consternation, no controls that might be used to open it were evident as they had been in the rotunda. Nor was there anything that appeared to be a knocker or doorbell. The door was as blank as a section of wall, or blanker, considering the walls were decorated with bas-relief sculptures of long-ago Jedi wielding lightsabers.

"How do we get in?" Virginia asked.

"You must have to be able to use the Force," Wolf surmised. "Wizards tend to be like that - and I know they're not wizards like in the kingdoms, but they're the closest thing to it here."

Virginia frowned at this information and beat both her fists determinedly on the door. It made disturbingly little sound, but just as she was about to give the door a good kick, a hologram appeared beside them.

The hologram was of a tall, thin man wearing Jedi garb, and with long blonde hair tied back in a ponytail.

"May I help you?" he asked sourly.

Virginia was taken aback by his tone.

"We'd ..." she began, and then cleared her throat to start again, "We'd like to speak to Obi-Wan Kenobi." 

"_Master_ Kenobi is in an important meeting," the man informed her superciliously, as if it wouldn't have mattered if Ob-Wan was on the john, he would have considered it more important than riff-raff coming to the door. As an afterthought, he added carelessly, "May I take a message to him for you?" although it was clear he was only asking out of duty.

Wolf and Virginia exchanged an apprehensive look.

"Could you tell us how long the meeting is expected to last?" she inquired.

The man sighed audibly.

"The meeting doesn't have a prearranged schedule," he informed them, his tone growing somewhat aggravated. "It's _important Jedi _business,_vital_ to the _Republic._" He emphasized the words heavily, as if speaking to uneducated children. "Now, if you have an _important_ message for him, I will deliver it for you when the meeting is over."

Virginia hesitated, silently grinding her teeth. She could feel Wolf tense next to her, although they weren't touching. At last, she said, "We'll come back later, thank you."

The man didn't even bother to nod to her in acknowledgment before the hologram winked out.

Wolf growled in frustration.

"He's a Jedi! How can he act like that?" he demanded.

"Remember in the second movie?" she reminded him. "Yoda did say a lot of them had become arrogant."

"But he has the Force! He should know that we really do need to see_Master_ Kenobi."

Virginia rolled her eyes. "You mean the same way he knows that the chancellor is a Sith Lord?" she asked pointedly. Then, more practically, she asked, "What's your next plan?"

He looked around at the street in front of the temple, but the buildings were so high they were in a virtual canyon and they couldn't tell what direction they were facing. This was not really anything new to Virginia, but it was still a bit disorienting to Wolf. Abruptly, he ran down the steps and into the street.

"Wolf, wait!" Virginia called after him, "I can't go that fast."

She navigated down the grand staircase as quickly as she could, glancing off to the left at what had caught his attention: A crowd of people congregated on the corner, and though the street they stood on was oddly deserted, the intersecting street bustled with foot traffic.

Wolf pointed up, and Virginia saw what the crowd was waiting for. Headed their direction was what appeared to be an oversized flying bus.

"Come on, Virginia," Wolf told her. "We can catch it if we hurry."

"But where are we going?" she asked again.

Wolf didn't answer. He was already halfway to the crowd on the corner.


	6. Chapter 6

The crowd pressed in around them tightly.

_Great,_thought Virginia, _I'm in the middle of an intergalactic rush hour._ Out loud she said, "Wolf. Where exactly are we going?" hoping she wouldn't have to repeat it yet again because he couldn't hear her (or chose not to hear her) over the crowd.

But he surprised her by replying, "I thought we could go back to the rotunda. Maybe someone is there who could tell us a good place to stay."

"Stay?" she asked. "You mean for the night?"

He nodded.

"It's going to get late. You can't keep going on indefinitely in your condition."

She started to protest, then realized he was right. While she was accustomed to running around New York, it was not on quite the same scale. She was beginning to get tired.

"You politicians?" a male voice asked in Virginia's ear. She turned her head and stared at close range into a pair of friendly brown human eyes.

"Errr... not exactly," she replied carefully, envisioning getting stuck listening to a long list of grievances with the government.

But "Wherefrom?" was all he asked.

Behind her, Wolf instantly replied, "Naboo," causing her to hope fervently that it wasn't also the home planet of their questioner.

But it didn't seem to be.

"Why don't you go to the Naboo embassy then, if you're looking for a place to stay?"

"Embassy?" she asked dully, even as she realized that of course, this part of the city would be similar to the area around the United Nations building, only on a much larger scale.

"I can't remember the address," he was continuing, "But the driver will know where you want to go if you just say 'Naboo embassy.' I can't believe they left you on your own. Usually they take very good care of their cadre." And then before she could stop him, he said, "Here, I'll place the stop for you," and pushed a button on the bulkhead in front of them. "Naboo embassy," he stated loudly.

"Thank you, sir," said Wolf in a heartfelt voice "Wasn't he nice, Virginia? We wouldn't have known how to get back to _our group_ without his help."

"Yes," she replied, trying to be pleasant. "Very nice." Privately, however, she was irritated that it was going to take them even longer to find a place to stay for the night, since now they would be obligated to exit the bus at a location they didn't want to visit. It hadn't occurred to her just how much she had been looking forward to showering and sinking into a comfortable bed until then, and she spent the remainder of the ride in a black mood with a fake smile plastered to her face, feeling like the politician she was not.

Until, that is, they actually reached the Naboo embassy.

"Ah, I see you recognize it," their benefactor declared with a twinkle in his eye.

"Yes," Virginia replied distractedly. "Thank you!" she added as they exited, her voice at last genuinely warm.

Wolf didn't speak. He was too busy staring open-mouthed at what they'd thought all along was simply Padme's apartment building.

------

From street level, which they had never seen, the building did indeed have a sign over the door which read, in an arcane-looking script (which they surprisingly could nevertheless read) _Offices of the Government of Naboo_. Virginia looked up at Wolf.

"What now?" she asked. Now that they'd been let off in front of the building, she was beginning to have second doubts about how fortuitous their finding it was. They weren't really citizens of Naboo, after all, so what were they supposed to be doing there?

"Don't worry," Wolf assured her. "I have a great plan. Let's go."

She held him back a moment.

"You're not going to break in or anything, are you?" she asked fearfully.

He looked hurt.

"Virginia," he scolded softly, "Of course I wouldn't do that. This kind of place is probably crawling with all kinds of high-tech security systems. We'd be thrown in jail like that!" He snapped his fingers for emphasis, then continued on across the street purposefully. Virginia followed, wondering what he could possibly have in mind.

The door swung open on a quiet reception area that reminded them both of the pseudo-neoclassical greco-italian architecture of the Naboo capital (and, not surprisingly, Padme's apartment). The ceiling soared two stories overhead, flanked by half-columns to the reception desk straight ahead, over which hung a red, white, and gold flag with a geometric emblem. Hung between the half-columns were a series of holographic portraits facing each other. The larger single one to their right was of the Naboo queen, replete with ceremonial makeup. To their left were two portraits - one a portrait of Padme, recognizable even without the caption "Senator Amidala," although she did not quite bear a complete likeness to Natalie Portman, and one labeled "Representative Binks," who really looked nothing at all like the buffoon in the movie (except for being a gungan). The likenesses surprised Virginia so much she stopped and would have stared at length at them, except that Wolf pulled her along with him on his purposeful march to the main desk.

"Good afternoon," Wolf announced with gusto to a young human female receptionist (there were five altogether, two men, two women, and a well-fed gungan of indeterminate sex).

"Good afternoon, sir," she replied pleasantly. "How may I help you?"

"I'm Wolf, and this is my wife, Virginia Lewis," he began. "We're here to begin our internship with the senator's office."

Virginia blinked, but forced her face to remain neutral, at least until she noticed the woman eyeing her with hostility, her gaze sweeping Virginia up and down, finally coming to rest pointedly on her very pregnant midsection.

After a profound silence, the receptionist shifted her gaze back to Wolf and replied icily, "Please tell my why I shouldn't call the authorities on you this very moment."

"Excuse me?" he countered.

She folded her hands on the desk.

"If you were truly graduates of the public service school of Naboo," she began, biting the words off sharply, "you would know that it is against our constitutional law to enter or continue in public service while simultaneously holding family commitments."

Virginia's grip on Wolf's hand tightened. Everyone at the desk was now staring at them openly, making it impossible for Wolf to use his Persuasion to extricate them. She noticed too late that the room they were in dead-ended at the desk, with only a single closed door visible to their right. No doubt several banks of hidden cameras were busily capturing their every movement. The path back to the door they'd entered the building through felt light-years long; they were trapped. How had they not foreseen this, she wondered furiously. Padme had been hiding her pregnancy, after all. Why do that? Why bother when it was only the identity of the father she needed to keep secret in order to avoid scandal, unless there was more to it than that? Something more; like this, for instance?

"Wolf ..." she murmured hesitantly.

But to her astonishment, Wolf did not apologize or back down.

"Naboo?" he inquired with (mock) astonishment. "I'm so sorry! We must have gotten the directions wrong. We were looking for the _Alderaan_embassy."

"Alderaan?" the woman asked skeptically (as well she might, thought Virginia).

"Yes," he insisted, brazening it out. "Could you be so kind as to give us directions on how to get there?"

The woman blinked several times, clearly weighing her options. Finally she said, "Of course. But why don't I call ahead so they'll know to expect you?" She smiled thinly, obviously expecting Wolf to refuse.

But he surprised both her and Virginia by replying, "Oh, would you please?" in an innocently earnest tone.

Though taken aback by his response, the woman hesitated only a moment before picking up a flat, circular disk and pressing some touchpads on its perimeter. After a moment, the grainy holograph of another woman's head and shoulders appeared centered on the disk. Virginia willed herself to sink out of sight through the floor, but it didn't happen.

"Hello," said the woman in the Naboo office to the holograph. "This is the Naboo office down the street. I know this is going to sound slightly irregular, but I have a couple of interns here that you were probably expecting."

It was difficult to gauge the exact reaction of the woman on the other end due to the fuzziness of the signal. It took her a moment to reply, but when she did her voice was steady.

"Of course," she replied. "Yes, please send them down. We'll be waiting."

The woman in front of them hung up and regarded them both with newfound respect.

"Please accept my apologies," she told them graciously. "I forget sometimes how disorienting it can be for someone to come to Coruscant for the first time. If you can wait just a moment, Senator Amidala's assistant will be down. It's only a short walk to the Alderaan embassy; she can take you there to make sure you don't get lost again."

"Senator Amidala's assistant?" asked Virginia, surprised.

"Yes," the woman assured her. "Dorme supervises all our interns; having her make sure you get where you're going is the least we can do after such a misunderstanding."

"Thank you _very_ much," Wolf told her.

------

Dorme proved to be as sweet a woman in person as her fictional counterpart. She inquired about the baby, managing to sound excited about it although she'd never met them before and would likely not have much interaction with them in the future - and without giving anything away about her boss's secret pregnancy. _Surely they must know by now, even if they've never been told and are pretending it doesn't exist,_ Virginia thought, looking down at her own swollen waistline. _She's__expecting__**twins**__, for gosh sakes! Omar the tentmaker wouldn't be able to hide that!_ She held her breath the entire way against Wolf's inadvertently blurting something out about Padme's condition, but he was surprisingly circumspect. It didn't take them long to walk the three blocks to Alderaan's offices, and the time passed quickly in Dorme's sunny presence.

------

"I've brought them to you," she announced cheerily to a woman Virginia supposed had been the one on the holographic phone, once they were safely inside the building. Then she turned and bade them goodbye: "If you need anything, please feel free to call on me. Again, we're very sorry about the misunderstanding."

She smiled again and vanished out the door, leaving them in the Alderaan reception area, a human-scaled room with recessed lighting, done in frosty blues reminiscent of the home planet's mountainous capital city. A holographic fire burned in a metal fireplace that dominated a sunken seating area, and looked like it belonged to the Jetsons. Over the fireplace hung a large portrait of the royal couple in full regalia, snow-capped peaks visible behind them.

"Welcome to the offices of Alderaan," a female voice bade them. They turned to see a tall, dark-haired woman of about 30, dressed in a long white gown; not the same woman who still sat behind the reception desk. "I am Charysa," she introduced herself. "And I would like to begin by apologizing to you."

"Apologizing?" Virginia asked distractedly. She was busy wondering how long it was going to take before whatever real interns they were expecting finally showed up, and trying to calculate how quickly they could get away before that happened.

"Yes," Charysa insisted. "I'm afraid the orders for your arrival must have gotten misfiled. It's not a problem," she hastened to add, "except that the quarters we've reserved for you haven't yet been cleaned. In the meanwhile, you're welcome to dine in the cafeteria. If you'll come with me, I'll show you where everything is."

"Oh, yes, thank you," Wolf gushed before Virginia could stop him. "That would be wonderful. We're _famished!_"

_Why did she have to mention food?_ she wondered irritably._ We might have been able to beg an excuse and get away. Now we'll be further inside the building. What if the real interns show up?_

But as Charysa had their hands scanned (for entrance to the rest of the building) and Virginia listened to what she said as they walked the short distance to the cafeteria (which was on the second floor), she slowly realized that maybe there weren't any real interns at all. In fact, she was so surprised by something Charysa told them that she nearly gave them away, but managed to stop herself just in time. When they finally sat down at the table to eat - alone - Virginia whispered her thoughts to Wolf.

"Did I hear that wrong or does she think that we're exchange interns from Naboo?"

Wolf's mouth was predictably full already, and she had to wait for him to swallow.

"Of course that's what she thinks," he told her as if it should have been obvious.

"How did you know that?" she hissed.

Again she had to wait for him to swallow.

"Governments will go to huge lengths to keep from insulting each other," he said. "When the Naboo receptionist called here, she couldn't just say, 'I have a couple of imposters here' in case we weren't imposters. She had to word it so that we might be who we said we were, because otherwise she could have been insulting Alderaan."

"How did you know that Alderaan would say they were expecting us?"

There was another pause while he finished chewing and swallowed again.

"I didn't," he admitted. "But if they'd said they weren't expecting us, I'd have claimed they must have lost our paperwork and asked them for directions on how to get here anyway, except of course we wouldn't have actually come. You need to eat something, Virginia. Try this stuff, it's _very_ tasty!"

She looked down at the plate of unfamiliar food and picked at it once with her fork, then looked back up again.

"So there aren't any real interns about to show up and expose us as imposters?"

His mouth was full again, so he just shook his head.

"But why did they say they were expecting us?" she pressed.

"Because they couldn't say they weren't or they'd have been insulting Naboo," he explained. "If Naboo had really arranged an intern exchange with them, they couldn't refuse to host us at the last minute just because they lost the paperwork."

"But there was no paperwork."

"They don't know that."

She digested this.

"So ..."

"So we have a place to stay for the night, dinner, probably breakfast ..."

"And a government job," she mused softly to herself.


	7. Chapter 7

Author's Note: I had no class today so you get two chapters instead of one. :-)

* * *

Virginia had insisted they return to the Jedi temple first thing in the morning.

"We have a legitimate address and phone number now that will make our request more believable," she explained to Wolf during the taxi ride there.

"We could have given them an address and phone number yesterday," he argued.

"Except that we wouldn't have been at that made-up phone number later," she retorted. "That guy wanted us to leave a message. I don't trust him to deliver the actual message without distorting it, but if we just tell him we want Obi-Wan ..."

"Master Kenobi."

"Yes, Master Kenobi - you know what I meant - anyway, if we just tell him we want Master Kenobi to call us, that should work."

When they arrived, Virginia squared herself in front of the door, preparing to do battle with the SOB who'd looked down his nose at her the day before. But when she knocked, she was met with the holographic image of a pre-teen padawan instead, his sandy hair cut in the hideous trademark short ponytail and long, skinny braid.

"May I help you?" he asked them pleasantly.

"Yes," said Virginia crisply, then cleared her throat, mentally gearing down from the fight she'd been prepared for. "We'd like to speak to Master Kenobi, please."

"I'm sorry, he's in the morning war report meeting," the boy said, dashing her hope that they might actually get to talk with him this time. "They all are. May I take a message to him for you?"

This she was prepared for, and gave him the holophone number of the Alderaan main offices, accompanied by the extension of what she thought of as the cell phone they'd issued her.

"Please have him contact us as soon as possible," she re-iterated. "It's extremely urgent."

"Yes, ma'am, I will do that," he promised as the holograph winked out.

They stood there a moment longer under the massive overhang of the building.

"Now what do we do?" Wolf asked her.

"We wait," she told him. "Let's get back to the office; we've got to act like we're really interns. They'll be expecting us to get to work."

------

When the War Report ended, Cin Drallig walked down the three flights of stairs to the front vestibule to relieve the padawan stationed there from guard duty. On the way he passed Anakin Skywalker running up to the meeting room late, taking three steps at a time in his hurry. Drallig scowled. The young knight had been granted exceptions to their procedure since arriving here when he was nine, which was six years older than the oldest novice prior. No doubt he had some convenient excuse for missing today's meeting, as well. Drallig realized his observations could be mistaken for resentment except that he knew he was far from alone in his thinking regarding young Skywalker. The man had proven to be an excellent swordsman, it was true, Drallig grudgingly admitted, but proficiency in light saber technique alone did not make a Jedi.

His thoughts turned from distaste to approval as he came within sight of Zett Jukasa, the padawan he'd left on guard duty earlier that morning. This boy would grow to be a match for golden boy Skywalker, he mused. At the age of 10 he was already showing unparalleled promise.

"Zett," he said as he approached. "You've carried out your duty well."

"Thank you, master," the boy replied. "I had a visitor this morning." Eagerness was evident on his face; few approached the temple via the traditional entrance anymore, so the experience was a novel one.

Drallig frowned, remembering the couple who had come calling the evening before.

"A man and a pregnant woman?" he asked sharply.

"Yes, master," Zett replied, astonished. "They left a message for Master Kenobi."

"Did they?" This was new, at least. He wondered what had caused them to change their mind, and what the message itself entailed. Last night they'd seemed to him like nothing so much as ordinary workers of some sort with too much free time on their hands. "Let me see it," he said.

Zett handed over the datapad on which he'd written the message.

"They said it was very urgent," he told the older man.

Drallig read what Zett had written with surprise. He glanced up.

"They're from Senator Organa's office?" he asked, more to hear the words out loud than for confirmation from the padawan - it was, after all, what the boy had written down.

"Yes, master," came the dutiful reply.

Deep in thought, the swordmaster stood up straight and nodded dismissal to the boy, an automatic gesture.

"Thank you, padawan," he said. "You are dismissed. Report to your classes immediately."

"Thank you, master," the boy replied formally. Then he added, "But ..."

Drallig's eyes flashed as the irregularity of the response drew his attention from his own musings.

"Yes?" he asked sharply.

"I gave my word that I'd deliver the message to Master Kenobi," the boy insisted.

Drallig's features softened.

"I'll deliver it for you, Zett," he told him. "Hurry now or you'll be late."

Satisfied, the boy disappeared down the hallway. Drallig sat down at the guard console and went through the motions of the start of his watch - checking the equipment, reviewing the security holovid, policing the vestibule (not that anything was out of order there, but it was his duty to police it all the same). The motions he went through were so familiar to him that he could allow his thoughts to roam free at the same time. What did the couple want, he wondered? No, it was more than that; it was the manner of their approach - coming in person to the traditional entrance, and not choosing to leave a note at first, or even say who had sent them. If they had contacted the temple in the usual manner - via holophone - he would not even be curious about it. Kenobi was who they wanted to see, after all, not him. He sighed. As he should not be curious now, he scolded himself. Irregular though it was, it was still Kenobi's business. And as much as he was of the opinion that Kenobi had been far too soft in the methods he'd used to train Skywalker, the Council master himself was well respected by all, including Drallig. He'd deliver the datapad and forget about it. But he would have to finish his watch first. They might have insisted the matter was urgent, but if they were able to wait overnight before they decided whether or not to even leave a message, it could surely wait a few more hours. Being a council member, Kenobi would be attending this afternoon's meeting. Drallig would deliver it to him then.

------

Virginia and Wolf had been assigned to separate trainers for the duration of the day, except for lunch, which they got to eat together (although their trainers were still present). The morning was spent touring the office facility, and Virginia did her best to not appear clueless about how anything she saw operated. It helped that she spent the morning worrying about what kind of excuse she could make if she suddenly got the call she was expecting from Obi-Wan, because it left her less time to worry about how she was going to do her job with no idea of how to even operate any of the equipment. Fortunately, her trainer, an older woman named Janila, wasn't a taskmaster and loved to talk, so after a near-disaster where Virginia had to describe her 'home planet, Naboo' as "oh, it has a lot of water and waterfalls ..." she was able to keep the woman talking about Alderaan.

That afternoon, they took a tour of the rotunda itself, learning where the senatorial offices were, where the pages and interns were expected to stay and what their primary functions were. And Janila continued on the roll Virginia had started her out on that morning, describing in detail the outstanding retirement package Alderaan offered its public servants, including a blade of grass by blade of grass description of the property she had recently purchased and on which she intended to retire in the next five years, and how she thought it would make such a nice retreat for her grandchildren long after she were gone. Virginia nodded politely, but barely paid the description any attention, since by then all she could do was worry about why Obi-Wan had not yet called. Hadn't that boy delivered the message? Or had he? Could Obi-Wan be just as stuck up in person as the jerk they'd met at the door the night before, and only altered by Lucas for his movie? No, that didn't seem right, but it still didn't explain why he hadn't called. When the workday finally ended, she was both glad to be able to stop pretending to pay attention and angry at the Jedi order all over again for snubbing her, and she dragged her husband back onto the elevator for a private talk when he started to get off.

"But the cafeteria was on that floor," he objected.

"Nevermind that now," she ordered, then explained, "I never got the call."

"Huff puff," he said. "We'll just have to try something else."

"Like what?" she demanded.

"I don't know, Virginia," he admitted. "I'm _famished_; I haven't eaten _anything_ since lunch, and you know I can't think when I'm starving."

The elevator opened on their floor.

"Okay, let's go eat," she capitulated grumpily, pressing the switch for the cafeteria level once again.

"We'll figure out something," he told her. "We have to."

She heard the tremor in his voice at those last words and looked up at him. He peered at her from the corner of his eyes, trying to keep the tears away.

"I saw Padme," he whispered. "We can't let her die."

------

Obi-Wan felt sick to his stomach as he watched his former padawan stomp away down the stairs, still angry. As a council member, he was obligated to uphold the decisions made by the council even when he disagreed with those decisions. He'd tried to let Anakin know he disagreed, that he himself had voted against ordering Anakin to spy on the chancellor, but he didn't want to be too blunt about how he had voted since he had also not endorsed Anakin's becoming a Master. In light of how badly his brother had taken the news, Obi-Wan felt that this knowledge would only serve to drive a further wedge between the two of them.

He sighed wearily and turned around — and nearly bumped into Cin Drallig.

"Master Drallig!" he exclaimed.

"Master Kenobi," the other greeted him. "A message came for you this morning. It was delivered at the front door." He handed Obi-Wan a datapad.

"The front door?" Obi-Wan repeated.

Drallig nodded.

"Padawan Zett Jukasa took it," he added, then nodded once more in acknowledgment and left.

Obi-Wan looked down at the pad. It instructed him to call someone named Virginia at a number in Senator Organa's office, but there was nothing to suggest what the matter was about other than it was urgent. And, he mused, that he had been asked for specifically by name, which he thought was unusual in itself. The only member of their order who had ever been asked for by name prior to this was Anakin, and then always by the chancellor's office.

That line of thought brought him back to where he'd been before, to Anakin and the miserable task he'd been handed. The objections he had raised were all valid ones; whatever one personally thought of the chancellor, the fact remained that he and Anakin were friends and it was cruel to ask him to abuse that friendship. Nor could Obi-Wan escape the feeling that it was somehow inherently wrong for the Jedi to physically spy on anyone in the first place. Nevertheless, the decision had been made and he was bound to abide by it. But that didn't mean he couldn't offer what support he could to his former padawan. He'd intended originally to do so behind the scenes by accompanying Masters Windu and Yoda to the spaceport when Master Yoda left for Kashyyk. They'd been the only others on the council to vote against having Anakin report on the chancellor, but unlike Obi-Wan, they hadn't voted that way out of a consideration of Anakin's feelings. They simply didn't trust him, and Obi-Wan wanted to make it clear to them that his own vote was not cast from a lack of trust in the man he'd trained. Only he thought now that since the Alderaan senator's office wanted to talk to him, he might ride to the rotunda with Anakin instead and show his support more directly.

------

He caught up with his former padawan just as Anakin was preparing to taxi his fighter out of the hangar.

"What is it?" the younger man asked as he climbed back down out of the cockpit.

"Nothing serious," Obi-Wan replied. "At least I don't think it is. I got a message from Senator Organa's office asking me to contact them and thought I'd ride over to the rotunda with you. That is, if you don't mind me tagging along." He gestured to the one-man fighter, which the other man routinely used as his personal speeder.

Anakin glanced back at the vehicle and shrugged.

"Feel free," he said, and began walking to the taxi stand. It was clear to Obi-Wan that he had not yet gotten over his anger at the council's decision, and they walked together in silence until they had boarded the taxi (which, like all public transportation on Coruscant, was free for the Jedi).

As the craft started on its way, Anakin finally broke the silence.

"What does Senator Organa's office want with the Jedi?" he asked.

"I don't know," replied Obi-Wan. "But it isn't the Jedi they want; it's me in particular." He handed Anakin the datapad for the other man to see.

"They really came to the front door?" he said, frowning down at the readout.

"Apparently so."

There was another moment of silence, during which Obi-Wan thought Anakin (by his expression) must be trying to fathom the mystery of such a summons. But as he finally handed the datapad back, all he said was, "Well, you'd better watch it. The council might decide you should start spying on Alderaan for them."

"Anakin." Obi-Wan stated, finally deciding to tell his friend in no uncertain terms exactly how he had stood on that issue; he couldn't offer him any realistic support so long as the other man harbored any doubts whatsoever that Obi-Wan might have voted in favor of the council's position. "I want you do know that I did not vote in favor of sending you on this assignment."

Anakin's blue eyes bored into his.

"And what about making me a member of the council? Did you vote against that as well?"

Obi-Wan sighed. He'd been afraid that once he started talking about how he had voted on the other issue that this one would inevitably come up. But he couldn't lie about it.

"Yes," he said quietly. "Though I suppose that isn't what you want to hear."

There was a definite tightness in the other man's voice as he asked, "Why?" But Obi-Wan was surprised that was all he said. He'd expected a lengthy tirade.

"Because I don't believe you're ready for that yet," he said truthfully, "Though I'm certain you will be in a few more years - or maybe less."

"I see." His tone had an edge of finality to it, as if that was the end of the conversation, period, and further continuation would not be tolerated.

But Obi-Wan was not yet finished.

"That wasn't the only reason," he continued, wishing now that he hadn't come. Nothing was going as he'd planned it; his support was not welcome, and in fact, he was simply making matters worse. But it all had to be said, just the same. It was too late to stop. "I know you will disagree with this, but I don't feel it was the chancellor's place to appoint anyone to be a member of the Jedi council. I know he controls the council now, but ..."

Anakin stopped the taxi. Obi-Wan feared the worst. _Is he going to insist I get out? _he wondered.

But Anakin simply said, "That was exactly what I told the chancellor when he told me about his decision."

Perplexed, Obi-Wan asked, "You don't think it was his place to do that either?"

Anakin shook his head. "No, that's not what I meant. What I told him was that the council would never go along with making me one of its members because they were ordered to; that they chose their own. He assured me that I was mistaken."

"And you believed they would automatically promote you to Master in the process?"

"No! That's ..." he looked away, then continued more quietly, "If they voted me onto the council, yes, but only because it had never been done otherwise. They way they did it was ..." he threw his hands in the air and repeated what he'd said earlier, "insulting."

For a moment, Obi-Wan said nothing, though it seemed to him that Anakin was making a different point than he'd thought he'd been making in the temple. Finally he asked, "And if they had decided to deny the chancellor's request that you become a council member ...?"

His former apprentice looked him straight in the eye and replied, "That was what I _expected_ them to do, Master."

"Then you would have accepted that decision?" he asked, surprised.

"Of course I would," came the reply. "What did you think I meant?"

Obi-Wan started the taxi again.

"I wasn't sure," he said noncommittaly._ I guess that's the reason I'm the negotiator and he ... is not_, he thought, reflecting that it hadn't been the first time he'd been unable to follow the other man's thought processes.

"Are you meeting that Virnga at the rotunda?" Anakin asked him, evidently as anxious to change the subject as he was.

"No," he told him. "I thought I'd just talk to Senator Organa about whatever it is and cut out the middleman."

Anakin nodded, already sinking back into his private thoughts distractedly.

"But the real reason I decided to tag along was that I thought you could use a friend," Obi-Wan finally admitted.

The younger man's eyes snapped up to meet his and he saw a deep appreciation in them as Anakin smiled for the first time that day.

"Thank you, Master," he said.


	8. Chapter 8

"Senator Organa," began Obi-Wan as he entered the senator from Alderaan's office in the rotunda.

"Master Kenobi," the other man greeted him in return. "What brings you to my office today?"

"I got the message from your Coruscant office and thought it might save some time if I spoke to you directly," Obi-Wan informed him.

The senator looked confused.

"What message was that?" he asked.

"The one asking me to call a ..." he consulted the datapad "... Virginia at a number in your office." He handed the datapad to the senator. "Don't you know what this is about?"

Bail Organa stared down at the readout, frowning.

"I'm afraid not," he said. His dark eyes glanced up at Obi-Wan. "And I don't recognize the name. Not that it might not be someone new," he hastened to add. "But would you mind if I investigated this before you respond? It shouldn't take more than a couple of hours."

"Not at all," Obi-Wan assured him, now more mystified by the message than before. Was it some sort of elaborate hoax, he wondered as he left the office, or had he been hijacked into the midst of a political intrigue?

------

Political intrigue was the first thing Organa suspected after he had called his main office and discovered that Virginia was an exchange intern from Naboo. At the moment she hadn't been in, so wasn't available for him to speak to, but he wasn't quite sure he wanted to do that just yet anyway. He'd treated the matter as if it was something trivial and told them not to bother her about it; the last thing he wanted at this point was for her to suspect she was being investigated.

He leaned back in his chair and stared absently out the window at the grey light of late afternoon, steepling his fingers against his chest. Was it a coincidence that yesterday was the first day the petition committee had invited Senator Amidala to their meeting? He himself had been the one to suggest her inclusion, as they had always seemed to have a similar outlook in the past on how government should behave. Had he been wrong to trust her? He recalled a statement she had made during that meeting: she'd wanted to include the Jedi - or at least one or two select Jedi - in their plans. While Organa had no objection, the others had not agreed. With the Jedi now reporting directly to the chancellor, they could not be certain where the order's loyalties would lie. Was Senator Amidala intent on informing them anyway, and in such a manner as to make anyone who investigated think it was Alderaan who had gone against the committee's decision?

He rubbed his face, smoothing his goatee. The problem was, he couldn't see Padme doing such a thing and didn't think he was that bad a judge of character. He might be wrong, but ...

But it was unfair to her to simply sit and speculate. He ought to ask her what was going on. No doubt it was something very simple.

------

Except that she did not know anything about Virginia's message either.

"Then I hate to ask you this," he began, "But do you think she could be working for Palpatine?"

Her warm brown eyes were full of trepidation as she replied, "I don't know."

She was silent a moment, and then abruptly stood up from behind the desk, which surprised him. He knew she was pregnant; it was impossible for anyone familiar with human anatomy to not know it at this point, yet she'd persisted in trying to hide herself behind any available object. A short review of Naboo law had told him the likely reason, but did little to enlighten him on her motivation.

"I ... I have a ... a date tonight," she told him. "And I don't really want to be late for it. Perhaps we could continue discussing this on the way to the taxi platform?"

Doubly perplexed, he could only agree, and followed her out the door. Once in the corridor, however, she walked as fast as her ungainly body would allow, and said nothing.

"Are you attending the ballet?" he finally inquired, hoping to get her to talk if he changed the subject.

"What?" she asked distractedly.

"For your date," he elucidated. "The Mon Calamari performance has been booked for months."

"Oh," she replied as they reached the hypostile hall fronting on the nearest platform. "No."

He was debating whether or not to join her in the taxi when she grabbed him by the arm and pulled him on.

"Just drive us around for a little while," she instructed the vehicle. As it took off, she sighed with relief and closed her eyes.

"Are you all right?" he inquired with the solicitousness of a man who has seen his wife through four miscarriages.

She opened her eyes to glance at him and nodded.

"I just thought ..." she began, then changed it to, "I'm probably overreacting."

He waited for her to go on.

"I don't have a date tonight," she confessed. "I just needed to get out of that office. I thought, if she _is_ Palpatine's agent, that there could be a listening device. The timing bothers me more than anything."

"Because of yesterday's meeting?"

She nodded.

"I don't like to think he would do such a thing," she added, "But then I never thought he'd try to assume so much power and keep it for so long, either."

Bail carefully weighed what he was going to say next. Palpatine would certainly be aware of the antiquated Naboo law that Padme was now technically violating. If he were as devious as she was postulating, he hadn't remained quiet about it out of simple consideration as her staff had undoubtedly done, but was holding it in a hand he intended to play to his advantage sometime in the future, if pressed. What Bail didn't know was whether Padme herself was aware of this.

"Well, I'm sorry you don't really have a date, anyway," he joked. "I was hoping to get a glimpse of your husband."

All the color drained from her face; for a moment he was afraid he'd said too much and that she was about to pass out.

"My hu ... husband?" she gasped.

"Padme," he said, taking her gently by the arm, "Naboo is the only system in the republic with a law like that. No one is going to think less of you because ... because you have a child."

He saw the glitter of tears in her eyes before she looked away.

"I'm sorry," he said. And he was very sorry for upsetting her, though he saw now that it had been necessary, after all. He just hoped she'd be able to recover from the shock he'd dealt her. "Are you all right?" he asked again.

"What?" she asked, then seemed to realize that he meant physically all right. "Oh, yes," she said, trying not to choke. She looked down and caressed the swell of her pregnancy. "I just can't believe I was so stupid that I thought I could hide this by just covering it up with enough fabric. What am I going to do?"

He heard the edge of panic in her words and bit back the conclusion he'd been about to draw for her. She might still make it herself, but if not, there would be plenty of time after she'd recovered from the shock of being found out.

"Are you sure you're all right?" he asked again.

She glanced at him sideways and asked hesitantly, "How much ... do you know?"

He wasn't quite sure what she meant, so he said, "About you being pregnant? Nothing, really, except that you are. Or were you asking me if there was any gossip?"

"Is there? Gossip?"

"Not much," he replied truthfully. "Just curiosity about why you would want to hide it."

"No questions about ... about the father? My husband?"

"A couple of senators from morally narrow systems postulated that you might be concealing your pregnancy because you're not married, but that's all," he told her. "And the rest of us assured them that wouldn't be sufficient cause for anyone other than residents of their systems."

"I_am_ married," she half-whispered, her voice hoarse.

------

Padme pressed her hands to her temples; Bail's revelation had given her a pounding headache, and she was having a difficult time organizing her thoughts. She felt humiliated, like she wished she could just crawl into a hole, and a large part of her thought maybe she should do just that. Palpatine might have said nothing so far, but that was only because so far she hadn't directly opposed him. She'd been going to offer to be the spokesman for the committee when they presented the petition to the chancellor the next day, both as a show of good faith to the committee, whom she knew had been hesitant to invite her in because she was from the chancellor's planet, and because she'd thought it might carry more weight to convince him to relinquish his power if he saw that his own senator wished him to do so. It was only now that Bail had revealed to her how ... blind? stupid? deluded? she'd been that she realized how risky it would be to even associate herself at all with the petition.

"I can't be on the committee, Bail," she whispered, not trusting her voice enough to speak aloud. "He'll just use my situation to draw attention away from the issue."

"You can still be on the committee," he replied immediately, as if the thought had occurred to him long before, "But in the same capacity as me: Don't sign the petition. If your name is not on it, you've got plausible deniability if it comes to it. But the committee will know you'll support them on the floor."

She shook her head.

"I should resign," she told him. "I'm guilty of the same thing. Worse, in a way, because he's at least got legal sanction for staying in office. I don't." It didn't matter that her primary reason for not resigning was to enable herself to remain on Coruscant, where she'd be near Anakin. And, because she knew that if she resigned, he would be likely to follow, and she would not be the cause of him leaving the order. She couldn't allow it.

"You shouldn't overreact," Bail cautioned her. "As I said, no one on the senate is going to fault you for remaining in office while you're pregnant. Palpatine is the only one who would be aware of that law. I wouldn't have said anything to you except that I wanted to be sure you were aware of the possible problem _he_ could cause."

She looked at him steadily.

"But the problem is that he _can_ cause trouble because of it, Bail," she insisted. "I thank you for pointing out my stupidity - really I do - but now that I know I can be compromised ..."

The thought came to her suddenly: _What if Palpatine knows about Anakin and me?_ and fear seized her heart so that she had to struggle to fight it down. _He can't know,_ she tried to calm herself. _He can't. _But the way she'd managed to lie to herself before was still too fresh in her mind for her to consider the matter rationally.

Fortunately, Bail mistook her terror for deep thought.

"Padme," he said after a moment had passed and she had not continued speaking, "What you ultimately do is up to you, however, no matter what decision you make, I would appreciate your help with finding out who this Virginia is and what she wants. We need to know if Palpatine_did_ send her. Once you've left office - if you do - that might not be possible."

She nodded, glad to have something specific to focus on for the moment. Maybe they'd find out the whole thing was completely innocent and she wouldn't have to leave ... _no, no, stop it,_ she told herself. _No more delusions. Just focus on the immediate problem; you're a senator, start acting like one!_

"Would you like me to call my office and ask about her?" she said.

He thought for a moment before replying, "No, I don't think so. That might alert someone that you've become suspicious."

"Well, what should we do?" she asked. "We can't just let it go on; she expected Obi-Wan to contact her today."

"Yes, Obi-Wan ..." he mused. After a moment, he said, "Padme, I believe that Obi-Wan will have to be let in on our plans."

"But the committee was adamant that no Jedi should know about the petition," she reminded him, still upset that she'd been forced to keep the secret from her husband.

"He still might not need to know," Bail told her. "It depends entirely on what she wants. But if it comes to it, I don't believe it would harm our cause for him, alone, to know. The committee didn't know about this problem when it made that decision, and they aren't here now. If you like, I will take the responsibility for informing him."

"No, that won't be necessary. I'm the newcomer and the one who asked about it,." she said, adding ruefully, "And I'm politically expendable now anyway." She tried not to think about how badly Naboo was going to look when all this was finished.

"Then let's call him and find out what's going on."


	9. Chapter 9

Obi-Wan had arrived at Senator Amidala's apartment, as requested by Senator Organa, freshly curious about what was going on. He was surprised to discover that she was in the late stages of a pregnancy _(nothing like such a graphic reminder of just how long I was stuck in the outer rim,_ he thought), and pleasantly congratulated her, but she simply gave him an odd look, which made him wonder if he'd broken some unknown social taboo, and immediately got down to business.

"Senator Organa asked you to meet us here because Virginia is an exchange intern from Naboo," she began.

"Oh," he said, enlightened. "Then her message must have come from you?"

She gave him a rueful look and shook her head.

"I'm afraid not," she told him. "I have no more idea of what she wants than Bail does."

For a moment, he was completely lost, but it didn't take long for him to remember that there was another very prominent politician whose home planet was Naboo.

"She couldn't ..." he said hesitantly, "be working for the chancellor ...?"

The two senators exchanged glances, and Obi-Wan felt a chill run down his spine.

"We don't really know," Senator Organa explained. "But it seems to be a possibility." He hesitated a moment before continuing, "There is a committee of senators - two thousand senators - who have drafted a ... petition. We are both members of this committee. Senator Amidala requested that the Jedi be informed of the petition's existence and content, but at the time the majority of the committee members did not agree. However, in light of Virginia's appearance, we - the two of us - have decided it might be best if you, at least, were informed..."

Obi-Wan held up his hand.

"Please stop," he said. "I am not in a position, nor am I of a mind, to keep any secrets that might concern them from the Jedi Council."

"The petition doesn't concern the Jedi Council," Padme told him. "It concerns Palpatine."

"Which would concern the Jedi Council, at least indirectly," he corrected her.

Senator Organa waved his hand as if to brush away any lingering hesitation.

"If you decide they must know after we tell you, then by all means do so," he said. "It may turn out to be entirely unnecessary for you to be informed, or it may not. But I, for one, would rather you heard from us what we have to say, if it comes to it." He paused a moment, then continued, "The petition is to request the chancellor to relinquish his emergency powers and step down. We don't feel a true state of emergency exists any longer."

It took only a few seconds for Obi-Wan's reaction to go from relief that the senate was finally taking action to shock at the realization that they had no real power left to act. But he was given no time to dwell on this as Senator Organa continued to speak.

"The committee was against informing the Jedi as they now report directly to the chancellor's office," he said. "We feel that if Virginia is working for Palpatine, her message is at the very least driven by this petition, even if it doesn't concern it directly." At this statement, Padme gave Senator Organa a sharp look, but he ignored it and continued, "You received the message from Virginia this morning. Yesterday was Senator Amidala's first day on the committee."

"They had been hesitant to include me because the chancellor and I are from the same planet," she explained.

"And I was the one who suggested her inclusion," he finished.

Obi-Wan was silent for a moment. What they were suggesting was more than simply that the chancellor had overstepped his bounds. The implication was that he was fully willing to crush anyone who opposed him. But why, Obi-Wan wondered. He had full power already; the very fact that only a petition could be presented to 'request' that he step down proved that. Was it ... was it simply _because_ the war was nearly over that he needed some additional excuse to stay on?

"Obi-Wan," Senator Organa continued, "Neither Padme nor I plan to be signatories to this petition. We support it, but feel our interests will be better served by working behind the scenes to ensure Palpatine steps down. However, if he is sending a message to the Jedi about it through this Virginia, then he must already know of our involvement."

There it was again, he thought. They _were _afraid. And then a truly horrible thought came to him: Suppose ... suppose Palpatine ordered the Jedi to arrest those who opposed him? Would they do it? He didn't think it likely. But if they did not ...

"Let's call Virginia and see what she wants," he said stonily.

------

The holovid chimed, not unlike a telephone call, Virginia remarked to herself as she lumbered out of bed to reach for it. She had all but given up on Obi-Wan returning her call, but now, as she examined the small, unfamiliar device for the button she'd been told operated it, she wondered exactly how she was going to approach him about the subject.

"Virginia, the phone's ringing," Wolf told her unnecessarily.

"I know that, Wolf, I'm trying to figure out which button to ..."

He pressed it for her and a grainy holographic image of Obi-Wan's head and upper body appeared above it.

"Hello," she said, then realized belatedly that he could undoubtedly see her too, complete with her nightgown and bed hair.

"Am I speaking to Virginia?" he asked. The voice could have been Ewan MacGregor's or Alec Guiness's; or it could have been someone else entirely (which it was) who merely spoke in a similar timbre.

"Yes," she replied.

"I am Obi-Wan Kenobi. What is it you wished to speak to me about?" he asked politely.

She froze, unable to formulate the words. It hadn't seemed that difficult when she'd rehearsed it to herself, but now that the moment had come, she was too conscious of the consequences of her failure. She thought about all the friendly people in the building where she sat who would be dead in twenty years, along with their entire planet. She thought of her trainer Janila's retirement and the property she'd bought for her family generations to come who would never be born. She hadn't known Anakin Skywalker - still did not know him, but she knew the people around her now and words stuck in her throat.

"Huff puff, Virginia!" her husband said from behind her. "Just tell him!"

His words jolted her out of her panicked hesitation, though she cast him an annoyed glance at the interruption.

"May I ..." she began, then changed it to, "Is there some place we could meet? It's rather complicated."

He looked away into space for a moment, as if considering, before answering.

"Would tomorrow around noon be all right?" he finally said.

"Yes, fine," she agreed. "Where shall I meet you?"

"Do you know where Dex's Diner is?"

"I've heard of it," she said truthfully. "But I'm not sure how to get there. Will the taxis know if I ask for it by name?"

He seemed startled by the question, but replied, "Yes, they should."

She thanked him and they broke the connection.

Wolf was, predictably, not happy with the delay.

"Ohhh, Virginia, you should have told him!" he declared.

"Tell him what?" she demanded. "'I called to tell you that the chancellor is the Sith lord, and that your friend Anakin is going to join the dark side?' He'd just think I was some crackpot, and then we'd never be believed. I need a chance to persuade him that we're telling the truth and I can do that best if I talk to him in person."

"Ohhh..." he repeated, puckering his face. He was still unhappy, but didn't argue. Instead he walked over to the window and fingered the controls that opened the blinds. The lights of Coruscant winked in at them, though the night sky was far from dark. In the distance, he could see some colored searchlights, and the beginning of what promised to be a laser show.

"Look," he said to her.

She had already gotten back into bed, and wasn't too inclined to get up again.

"What is it?" she asked.

"It's a ..." he stopped, and she saw sudden alarm in his face. "Oh, no," he murmured.

"What?" she asked, deciding she'd have to get up anyway. It took her a moment, but she waddled over to the window and looked out. "What is it?" she repeated.

"It's the theater," he told her. "The one with the ballet. Palpatine is telling Anakin the Sith legend right now!"

She squinted at the source of the lights.

"He can't be," she argued. "You said yourself that the whole thing took nine days, start to finish. That couldn't have happened at least until day six or seven. They're probably having a different showing, or some other performance."

He continued to stare out at the light show.

"I don't know, Virginia," he said somberly. "I've got a bad feeling about this."

She rolled her eyes.

"Just because we're in Star Wars, Wolf, doesn't mean we have to use their cliches."


	10. Chapter 10

For the second day in a row, Obi-Wan watched his former apprentice stomp away after the council meeting, disgruntled. Today, however, he had far less sympathy for him.

_How could you have believed the council would have sent you in command of a mission against General Grievous?_ he wondered. _Just because the chancellor told you so?_ He shook his head in disbelief. He'd wanted to believe what his friend had told him the day before; that he would have accepted without question the decision of the council if it had refused to admit him as a member entirely. But now he thought that wasn't very likely, even if Anakin himself believed it.

His thoughts were interrupted by Master Windu.

"Obi-Wan," the council head began, "You'll need to leave immediately. We need to catch Grievous before he moves again."

"Yes, Master Windu," he agreed. "I'd planned to get the troops ready and moving, and then leave first thing this afternoon."

"It won't wait that long," Master Windu insisted.

Obi-Wan sighed.

"I have an appointment to meet with someone at noon," he admitted. "She left a message for me here yesterday while posing as an exchange intern to Alderaan from Naboo, except that neither Senator Organa nor Senator Amidala have any idea who she is or what she wants. They believe she may be an agent of Palpatine's."

"Political intrigue is not Jedi business," Master Windu intoned, as if instructing Obi-Wan in a novice-level class.

"I'm aware of that," Obi-Wan replied patiently. "But in this case, the political intrigue could end up involving the Jedi. A large group of senators, including Organa and Amidala, are in the process of drafting a petition to ask the chancellor to relinquish his emergency powers. Due to the timing of Virginia's - that's her name - message (Senator Amidala just joined them two days ago), they believe Palpatine capable of acting in force against the committee. If he does, the possibility exists that the Jedi could be called out against innocent members of the senate."

"Why didn't you bring this up during the council meeting?" Mace demanded.

"Because until I meet with Virginia and find out exactly what she _does_want, it amounts to nothing except a conspiracy theory," Obi-Wan explained. "It may in fact turn out to have nothing whatsoever to do with Palpatine. I won't know for certain until I speak with her."

The other man considered what Obi-Wan had told him.

"I concede that this meeting must be kept," he acknowledged. "However, time is of the essence in Grievous' capture. I will go to meet this Virginia in your stead."

"With all due respect, Master Windu, that may not serve," Obi-Wan protested, knowing how intense and forbidding the council head could be to those not accustomed to his style. "She contacted me specifically, not the Jedi as an order."

Windu frowned.

"I could, however, call her and try to reschedule the meeting for an earlier time," Obi-Wan offered, the idea having just occurred to him. "And if she is not amenable to the change, I will inform her that you will then be meeting her in my place."

Mace nodded.

"Yes, that would be acceptable," he agreed. "And if what she has to say is of interest to the council, we will convene a special session before you leave for Utapau. May the Force be with you."

------

"Leave that here, Wolf," said Virginia as Wolf plucked up the holophone from where she'd laid it on the nightstand after talking with Obi-Wan the previous evening. "We're not coming back."

Reluctantly, he laid it back down.

"Huff puff, Virginia, are you sure we have to leave before eating breakfast?"

"Yes, I'm sure," she replied. "We can't afford to get stuck having to go to work today - we might not get away for lunch to make it in time for the meeting with Obi-Wan, and even if we do, how do we explain where we're going? It's not like we're going to need a place to stay tonight. We can go home as soon as we talk to him."

"If we can get into Palpatine's office."

"Well, yes," she agreed, trying not to think that far ahead. "But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it." _One problem at a time,_ she thought. "We can eat breakfast out at a restaurant; we've got enough credits left."

"At Dex's?" he asked.

She remembered Dex as looking like nothing so much as a gigantic talking cockroach.

"I don't know about that," she told him. "But somewhere."

Somewhat mollified, Wolf left the room with Virginia, and they walked down the hall and got on the elevator. As they rode it down to street level, the holophone chimed unheard in the empty room.

------

Since she had resigned herself to accepting the money Wolf had acquired from using his Persuasion two days ago, Virginia was pleasantly surprised to discover it was worth much more than she'd envisioned. They had dined in a fairly upscale restaurant, and even with Wolf's bacon obsession - on which he had seemed to go overboard this morning, hadn't spent a large percentage of what they had. In fact, she thought, at this rate, they should be able to afford a hotel room for the night if it did turn out they couldn't access the mirror immediately. Always assuming hotel rooms weren't exorbitantly expensive, that is - by which she meant exorbitantly expensive compared to New York standards.

"Huff puff, we still have three hours until the meeting," Wolf observed. "What should we do?"

"I don't know, Wolf," she told him. "What do you want to do?"

"Tony's going to be very mad that he didn't get to come," he observed. "Should we get him a souvenir?"

Her mind immediately conjured up the cheap trinkets she'd always seen sold at tourist traps, only with "Coruscant" inscribed on them, along with the points of interest - the senate rotunda, the Jedi temple - and she burst out laughing.

"I don't think he'd really be satisfied with anything other than a fully functional light saber, Wolf," she told him. "And you're not going to try and steal Obi-Wan's."

"Huff puff, no," he assured her. "I'd never give Tony a light saber."

That wasn't quite the reason she'd meant he shouldn't try to steal it, but let his remark pass.

"Why don't we go to the theater and see just exactly what performance it was that was going on last night?" she said. "And while we're there, we can see how long it is until the one Palpatine and Anakin were at."

------

But when they finally aroused someone on the maintenance crew at a stage door (along with theaters everywhere, this one was almost hermetically sealed during the daylight morning hours), the being, an alien with an elephantlike trunk who reminded her of the spy that had tailed Luke and Obi-Wan to Han's ship when they'd left Tatooine in the original movie, informed them that last night's performance was the Mon Calamari zero gravity water ballet.

"How many more performances are there?" Virginia pressed, undaunted.

"None," the being replied gruffly (at least, its deep, rough voice sounded rather gruff to her).

"None?" She couldn't believe it.

"No," it insisted, then elaborated, "The Mon Calamari say their water ballet is extremely demanding on the performers. So they only ever do one performance a year. We were lucky to have gotten them for the second year in a row; don't expect we'll be able to get a third - you can probably look on the holonet for where the next one will be. Gotta get tickets way in advance, though, no matter where it is. Pricey, too."

"Did the chancellor see the performance last night?" she pressed, still unbelieving.

"That he did; had his own box seats for his entourage," the being confirmed. "Lots of muckety-mucks here for that. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to get the place ready for the children's circus."

It closed the door.

"I can't believe it," Virginia exclaimed to no one in particular. She turned to Wolf. "I just can't believe it," she repeated.

"I told you that was what it was last night," he retorted hotly. "Didn't you believe me?"

"I couldn't believe the whole thing took place in nine days!" she exclaimed, ignoring his tone. "Let alone this fast!"

"Huff puff, can we go to Dex's now?" he whined. "I'm starving!"

"You just ate breakfast!" she replied. "A huge breakfast, even for you!" It was then that his sudden surliness clicked into place for her. "Wolf," she said slowly, "Does Coruscant have a moon?"

"What if it does?"

"Does it?" she asked evenly.

He stared defiantly at her for a moment, then looked away and mumbled something.

"What?" she asked. "Stop mumbling."

"I said it has four moons!" he shouted, then added in a tiny voice, "but they're very small."

------

In his more civil moments, Wolf had assured Virginia that, although at least one of Coruscant's moons was undoubtedly full, he did not feel near the strength of effect from it that he normally felt during the full moon at home - and he pointed out how he was able to be civil - now and then, anyway - as proof of that fact. He'd further convinced her that he would be perfectly fine at Dex's for their meeting with Obi-Wan - provided he was allowed to eat constantly, which shouldn't present a problem since Dex's was a restaurant, after all, he hastened to add - but most certainly because it wouldn't be night for quite some time and they'd no doubt be back through the mirror by the time the moon rose in the sky. Provided, he added acerbically, it was even possible to see the moon with all the glare from the lights on the planet.

They had gone immediately to Dex's, where Wolf had kept the droid waitress busy by ordering a series of what seemed to Virginia like everything on the menu. Dex, she noted with chagrin, looked even more like a cockroach in person than he had in the film. Unfortunately, because she didn't want to provoke a fight with Wolf (in case he happened to be in one of his non-civil moods), she was forced to sit alone with her doubts and fears about the likelihood of their mission being successful. It hadn't escaped her that Obi-Wan had left for Utapau to fight General Grievous the day following the ballet. The question now was, would he be able to meet them first, or would they sit here all afternoon waiting, while Wolf literally ate away all the cash they had left? Fortunately, like most greasy spoon diners, Dex's was not terribly expensive. Still, she kept a running total in her head of exactly how much Wolf's lunar cravings were costing them, and alternated between staring out the window and staring at her watch.

As the noon hour approached, the diner began to fill up, and Virginia began to get anxious. Would he show up? Would he be late or on time? Would ... Outside, in the crush of traffic, she saw a taxi approach. _Is this him?_ she wondered, not for the first time. As the door opened, she saw a man in Jedi robes, the glint of a light saber fastened to his belt - but it was not Obi-Wan Kenobi.

"Come on, Wolf, we're leaving," she said abruptly, throwing the credits they owed on the table. _At least some good came of me tallying all that up in advance ..._ She pulled on his arm.

"I'm not finished," he whined.

"Yes, you are," she insisted, then hissed, "Mace Windu is coming! Get up!"

He looked outside, curious, but yielded to her pull, and she had him up and out the door before the Jedi Master had crossed the threshold.

"Don't look at him," she whispered.

"I'm not," he said in a normal tone, making her wince.

She stared straight ahead at the taxi Windu had arrived in, and inspiration struck.

"Taxi!" she called. "Wait!" And she began to rush towards it.

Not ten feet away, Mace stared at them, fitting Obi-Wan's description of Virginia - a young human female with pale skin and dark hair, pregnant, probably with an unknown man - to the couple now rushing away from the diner.

"Excuse me," he said loudly, so as to make himself heard, but they paid no attention._ Two can play this game,_ he thought, and turned to follow. "Taxi, wait!" he called out.

Virginia stared out the window in horror at Mace's words. She couldn't explain it, but he'd always terrified her - even in the movie. There was just something forbidding about his manner the way Samuel L. Jackson had portrayed him, she thought. And while she granted that the real Mace Windu might be nothing like the actor's interpretation, she wasn't willing to take the chance that he might be exactly like that. In any case, he would have been absolutely last on her choice of people to warn, even though, as she would think later, he might have a right to know, given that the chancellor would kill him in the next couple of days. At the moment, however, she channeled her panic into the first thing that came to her mind, turned to the front of the vehicle, and said, "Emergency! I'm in labor - quick! Get me to the hospital immediately!"

To her relief, the ploy worked. The door slammed shut and the taxi took off, just out of Mace's reach. It didn't occur to her to wonder why he hadn't used the Jedi leap he'd demonstrated in _Attack of the Clones_ to reach them - not until she heard the siren blaring, anyway. The taxi had converted neatly into an ambulance. Everyone around would know their destination.

Beside her, Wolf growled, the excitement and fear he felt coming in waves from his mate having driven him deeper into his moon madness. He glared ferally out the window at the dark-skinned man chasing them, frightening his Virginia, as the craft lifted from the pavement.

And on the ground outside Dex's Diner, Mace Windu stared after the taxi turned ambulance in alarm. Surely that had to be Virginia, who had run from him as Obi-Wan had predicted. But he didn't need to speak to her to know that whatever she had to say, it would concern the council very much: The unknown man with her had the glowing yellow eyes of a Sith lord.


	11. Chapter 11

Obi-Wan momentarily squinted at the control readout in his fighter, made slightly more difficult to see through the holographic image of Mace Windu, who had called an emergency meeting of the council. Those not present on Coruscant, such as himself (and Master Yoda, now on Kashyyk), were attending the meeting virtually. He still had an hour until he reached his hyperspace exit point near Utapau; plenty of time for the meeting to take place, he hoped. But he ensured that the audio warning was toggled on just in case he became so engrossed in what Master Windu had to report that he lost all track of time.

Windu began the meeting ominously by asking Obi-Wan to recount Virginia's odd request to meet with him and the circumstances surrounding it, which he did, adding a few additional facts when he finished at the council head's request. Then Mace Windu himself took up the story, explaining how and why he had taken Obi-Wan's place at the meeting, and ending with Virginia's flight and his assessment of the man with her.

"Where are they now?" Ki-Adi-Mundi asked. "If they activated the emergency system in the taxi, then they would have been taken to the nearest hospital."

"We did try to intercept them there, however they never arrived. Apparently they were able to override the emergency system," Mace informed them. "The taxi itself was found, and their exit point discovered, but they had already left the scene."

"Have alerts been issued to the police force?" Plo Koon asked.

"It was thought safer to remain quiet, at least until this meeting had concluded," Eeth Koth told him. "If he is a Sith, he would be able to sense that the police were looking for him, even if they did not approach, and he might turn overtly violent. We didn't want to unnecessarily endanger the population."

"If he is working through the chancellor, he will undoubtedly stay in the area of the city near the rotunda," Mace told them, evidently anxious to move the meeting beyond criticism of what had already taken place. "We need to form a plan to mitigate the situation. The chancellor has already manipulated the republic into giving him far more power than he should have, power that will go directly to this Sith Lord when he feels the time is right."

"If the chancellor does not give up his emergency powers after the destruction of Grievous," Ki-Adi-Mundi said, "Then he must be removed from office."

"The Jedi Council would have to take control of the Senate in order to ensure a peaceful transition," Mace told them.

Master Yoda had been quiet until this point, but spoke up firmly now.

"To a dark place this line of thought will lead us," he warned. "Grave care must we take."

"I agree, Master Yoda," put in Obi-Wan at this point, horrified by what he was hearing. "You do realize you're essentially talking about a military coup?"

"We are open to any suggestions you might have, Master Kenobi," Ki-Adi-Mundi told him. "But clearly something needs to be done."

Obi-Wan looked at each of them in turn, trying to gauge their feelings on the matter. He stopped when he realized someone was missing from the council - someone he felt should have been present for a discussion of directly combating a Sith Lord.

"Where is Anakin?" he asked abruptly.

"He's with the chancellor," Mace told him. "We thought it best to call this meeting without him. If Palpatine knew a special meeting of the Jedi Council was taking place, he would undoubtedly want a report on its content."

Obi-Wan frowned. He couldn't fault the logic of their reasoning - calling Anakin away from the chancellor would be certain to pique the man's curiosity, and his friend would be forced to either inform him of the reason the meeting was called or lie. But to his mind, this was the one meeting Anakin should have attended - even were he not a member of the council.

"I understand, Master Windu," he told him. "However, under the circumstances, I would suggest that Anakin be informed of what transpires here at the earliest opportunity. He is the Chosen One of the prophecy, is he not?"

To his great surprise, not only Master Windu, but Yoda as well, looked away.

"The prophecy misread could have been," Yoda told him quietly.

Whatever Mace had to say, he kept to himself, at least for the moment, but it was clear he agreed with the aged master.

Obi-Wan wanted to ask how long ago they had come to this conclusion, and what egregious error (or errors) on Anakin's part had prompted it, but he knew the meeting concerned what to do about the Sith Lord, not Anakin's transgressions, so he forced himself to be silent; he could always ask when he returned from Utapau. But still, the discussion bothered him on its own merit, so instead, he said, "As I understand it, there is no direct evidence that Virginia's companion is a Sith Lord other than his eye color. Or that it was ever entirely confirmed that the chancellor - or someone working to promote him - sent her. So it is still possible that we are simply chasing a shadow."

"The dark side of the Force surrounds the chancellor," Mace argued. "It seems reasonable to postulate that Palpatine may be in league with the Sith."

"I suggest we wait until Grievous has been destroyed," Ki-Adi-Mundi said. "And then see whether Palpatine is willing to relinquish his emergency powers."

His proposal went around to each member of the council, and, by simple majority, passed.

------

"Wolf, did you hear anything I said?" Virginia repeated, thinking, _Why didn't I think to ask if Coruscant had a moon before we came?_

"Of course I heard you," he snapped. "I'm not deaf!"

She sat down heavily on the bed in the hotel room and closed her eyes. It made her tired just to watch him pace up and down the room in front of her.

"Then let's go," she repeated yet again.

"We haven't finished!" he snarled.

"We've done everything we could and it hasn't worked," she said yet again. "There's nothing else we can do."

"It would have worked if you had just told Obi-Wan when you had the chance!" he shouted.

She stood up and planted herself in his path in front of him, staring him squarely in the face.

"That would not have worked and you know it!" she shouted back.

He stared at her defiantly a moment more and then backed down.

"I'm sorry, Virginia," he moaned. "But I just keep thinking of them destroying their lives over something that should never have happened."

"I know, Wolf," she agreed. "But the timetable for everything isn't the same as we thought it was. If we don't hurry, we're going to get caught here when Order 66 begins, and then that mirror in Palpatine's office is going to be a lot harder to get to. We need to leave now."

"Just one more chance, Virginia," he begged. "Pleeeeeeeeeeaaaaasssse?"

"What?" she demanded, sitting down again. "What else can we do? We certainly can't just march back out to the Jedi temple or into the Naboo embassy - we're probably already wanted criminals. We were lucky I was able to talk that taxi out of taking us to the hospital, or we'd be sitting in a jail cell right now, " (_if not an insane asylum,_ she mentally added). "Why can't you accept that there just isn't anything else we can do?"

For a moment he didn't answer her and she watched him stare in silence out the 200th floor window at the rapidly darkening sky, his hands clenching and unclenching. Then he turned and she saw the glint of yellow light in his eyes that the full moon always brought.

"Because it isn't," he growled at her.

"Wolf ..."

"WHAT?" he demanded, crossing the room to stand at the foot of the bed. "WHAT IS IT NOW?"

"There's no wild place left on this planet," she said quietly. "Nowhere for you to hunt. Let's go home."

His eyes narrowed and he regarded her speculatively.

"It's too late for that," he told her, and abruptly rushed out the door.

Blindsided by his quick getaway, it took her a moment to follow. But when she looked out into the hallway, he was nowhere to be seen.


	12. Chapter 12

The midday sun beat down upon the city outside as Wolf sat in the chair, watching his mate sleep as he devoured the last dregs of the fourth room service meal he'd ordered since returning from his full moon prowl. He'd returned early in the morning, elated beyond measure - it had been the first full moon in his entire life where he could clearly remember every detail of his actions, and even direct, from a somewhat rational viewpoint, what his actions would be. Of course, that direction had to be something to which his animal nature would agree, but it hadn't taken him long to get the hang of that - he'd spent a lifetime juggling exactly that balance when it wasn't full moon, albeit on a vastly less intense scale.

As the morning progressed, his animal nature waned, allowing his rational mind to once more become dominant. With it, his elation began to fade, and he began to dwell instead on the reason they'd come here, and the problem which remained unsolved. He knew, somewhere inside, that Virginia was right; they'd tried and failed (which was better than not trying at all, he conceded), and that because they'd failed, they needed to hurry home before they were caught up in the consequences. Yet the side of him that identified so heavily with Anakin refused to give up. There had to be a way, he kept thinking. There had to. But he had only the slimmest chance of an idea to work with, despite having spent a good portion of the night trying unsuccessfully to find a back way into the Naboo embassy.

On the bed, Virginia finally stirred, and he held his breath, filled with hope that she was going to wake up - for he wouldn't have dreamed of waking his pregnant mate (unless, of course, their lives depended on it).

Her eyes opened.

"Wolf!" she exclaimed, nearly flying off the bed and throwing her arms around him. "You're all right! Oh, my God, I was so worried, I stayed awake most of the night waiting for you, listening to the news to see if ... Oh, I'm so glad you're okay."

Guilt overwhelmed him (not a new feeling following a full moon, but one he'd hoped to avoid this time). _That's why she was sleeping so late,_ he realized.

"I'm fine, Virginia," was all he said out loud, stating the obvious as he held her

She clung to him a few moments more, then pulled back and stared at him severely.

"Don't you ever run off on me like that again!" she scolded him.

He didn't need to put on an act to appear contrite. There was no good reason for him to continue to endanger her. He squelched the part of his mind that told him she wouldn't have been endangered if she'd only listened to him and stayed home; he knew her well enough by now to know she'd never let him go off by himself on some dangerous quest ... and that thought made him feel guilty all over again for running off and leaving her alone to worry.

"What is that?" she suddenly demanded, having noticed the multitude of room service carts wedged into the room. "Wolf ... how much did you order?"

"I tried to leave some bacon for you," he said placatingly, "but you didn't wake up and it was getting cold - we could order some more if you're ..."

"I_ mean_ how much did all that cost?" she clarified.

"Don't worry, Virginia, we have enough to cover it," he assured her. "I checked."

"When is checkout time?" she asked.

"Tomorrow. You already slept past it," he told her, adding hastily, "I already paid for the next night - and two of these meals."

"Fine," she said, heading for the bathroom. "I'm going to take a shower. Whatever you do, don't forget to leave enough money for us to take a cab to the rotunda." She paused for a moment, evidently waiting for him to argue about the destination. When he said nothing, she added, "We're going home as soon as I shower, okay?"

"We can go to the rotunda then," he agreed.

"Wolf."

He looked up. "I just thought ..."

"Home."

"Virginia ..."

"Home."

"Virginia, please let me talk."

She sighed and folded her arms, waiting.

"I thought we could just try to see Padme in her office in the rotunda," he said. "If it doesn't work, then we could go right home."

She sighed again.

"Wolf, you know as well as I do that we're probably wanted for impersonating officials from Naboo. Now you want to just walk into their office? Are you out of your mind?"

"The people who work in that office aren't the same ones that work in the embassy," he told her. "They won't have any idea who we are. And if it looks like it's too risky, we won't do it."

She was silent a moment, thinking.

"Pleeeeeeeaaaaaaaassssse?" he added.

"On one condition," she told him. "I'm the one who gets to decide if it's too risky."

------

Darth Sidious, still disguised as Palpatine, took a deep breath and slowly let it out, repeating one of the first breathing exercises he'd been taught to do on that long-ago day when he'd been a young apprentice himself. Not ten minutes ago, he'd revealed himself at last to the new apprentice he'd chosen - Anakin Skywalker - and it had not gone quite as well as he'd hoped. Still, he told himself, Anakin's initial rejection was to be expected. He was, after all, the Chosen One of Sith and Jedi prophecy, a fact Sidious recognized well, though he knew the Jedi were too blind and set in their ways to accept it. In fact, it was quite possible they wouldn't even believe him when he told them what he'd just learned ...

Sidious permitted himself a small amount of satisfaction from this fact, it helped him regain his iron hold on the virtue of patience which had served him so well. _Patience ..._ He told himself again, holding the word in his mind as his mantra ... as indeed it had been for the past thirteen years. It had taken an unending amount of patience to corrupt one so pure of heart, yet the challenge had been fulfilling in its own way - helping the time pass while he put everything else in place for his new (post-Darth Maul) plan. _Patience ... _The most common vision he'd had of his own future included just this development - Anakin's initial rejection. But in those same visions, he'd nearly always come around eventually - even if Sidious had to nudge him a bit over the edge at the end. Apprentices did need help sometimes, he reflected, especially if they had no real natural talent for evil and had to develop it all from scratch. _Patience ..._

A door chime interrupted his thoughts and he walked into his public office to see his receptionist standing in the doorway to the waiting room. _Patience ..._ he scolded himself silently as he felt a wave of outrage boil up within (_What does she want __**NOW**_)._Patience ..._

"Sharia," he said warmly, "Is there something the matter?"

"I am so sorry to bother you, Chancellor," she began.

_I'll show you what it's like to be truly sorry, just you wait, _he thought, though the smile on his lips remained fully in place and his eyes danced with apparent kindness. Out loud he said, "You don't need to worry about that, Sharia. Now what seems to be the trouble?"

"There were reports of a monster roaming the corridors of the rotunda last night, sir," she said. "I know it sounds silly, but I keep thinking, it might not be a monster, might it? I just ... I just don't believe I'll be very comfortable staying here by myself – that is, if you don't mind, sir."

He blinked

"A monster?" he repeated, trying not to sound as if he disbelieved her. _Patience, not that much longer to keep this painful smile plastered to my face; not that much longer, patience ..._ "What sort of monster?"

"Well, that's just it," she said, "They said it was some kind of animal in the shape of a man - with glowing yellow eyes."

_Yellow eyes?_ This did interest him. _Haven't I been careful enough?_ he wondered immediately, followed by,_ Of course I have; I wouldn't make that kind of foolish blunder, certainly not for no good reason, and there was nothing of any remote interest going on last night ..._ It was too bad, he thought. He'd intended to cut her throat himself and blame it on the Jedi if they came for him tonight. But apparently it wasn't quite her time to go. No doubt a slower, more pleasant idea for her murder would occur to him later.

"It's all right, Sharia," he told her. "Why don't you go ahead and take this afternoon off? I'm sure they'll find out what's going on soon. The rotunda has an excellent security system, you know. I'll be all right here by myself for one afternoon."

"Oh, thank you, sir," she gushed. "You're so understanding."

_If you only knew .._. he thought with a smile as he watched her leave.

An uneasy thought occurred to him a few moments after she'd gone. Curiosity, more than anything, overcoming him, he walked back into the inner lounge where he'd told Anakin his true identity and stared speculatively at his mirror. His own reflection - or rather Palpatine's - stared mutely back at him. He had inherited the mirror from his master, who'd amassed a vast collection of rare artifacts. Most were not something one could openly own, however, and still maintain the appearance of an upstanding citizen. But the mirror served perfectly well as an ordinary mirror, albeit with a rather unusual frame. However, since the frame was purely decorative and did nothing itself (except conceal the controls to work the mirror's special function), he could explain it away as simply gaudy taste in a 'family' heirloom.

Now, however, he stared at it suspiciously, the story his receptionist told running through his mind. He kept the mirror locked at all times (except when he used it himself - generally for quick trips to a location the Jedi couldn't detect, where he was free to give in to his Sith urges without compromising his personal mission), but he supposed it was possible someone had managed to find the key and activate it without his knowledge (although the idea generated a rage he had to force himself to sublimate - _patience!_). Quickly he strode to his private desk, where he entered a passcode which opened a concealed drawer. The key to his mirror lay inside, just where he had left it. Picking it up, he returned to the mirror, inserted it, and then slid the activation mechanism to the 'on' position. His reflected image dissolved, and, after a momentary flash of interior refraction, he beheld the same location he'd last seen in it, as expected: A mountainous area with mostly scrub vegetation, rocky, save for the planted landscape of the owner's mansion. No monsters prowled that place, he knew. Animals, yes, but not animals in the shape of a man. He switched the mirror off, noticing only then, by the contrast with the brilliant daylight of the world he'd just observed, how late it was getting. Time to stop chasing phantoms, he told himself. No doubt someone had just had a bit too much to drink. He walked back into his private office, deciding to busy himself with inspecting the plans for his next project. That should keep his mind occupied until either the Jedi arrived to confront him or Anakin returned to begin his training. He honestly didn't know which it would be, not yet. Sighing with contentment at a plan well executed, he sat down and turned on his computer.

------

_The time has come, _Mace reflected again, as he and three other masters - Kit Fisto, Saesee Tinn & Agen Kolar - set off on their way to the rotunda to test Palpatine's reaction to the news that Grievous was dead. Obi-Wan's report of mission accomplished had come only moments before. He only hoped the chancellor would choose wisely, for he knew he and Master Yoda differed greatly on how the situation should be handled if the chancellor refused to relinquish his powers now that no vestige whatsoever remained of the state of emergency he'd declared three years earlier.

When they reached the hangar bay, however, he was surprised to see Anakin Skywalker striding purposefully towards them when he was supposed to be in the chancellor's office. For a split second, he thought it might be possible that the chancellor had sent him to let them know he had already returned the powers to the senate (possibly the petition Obi-Wan had described had worked?), but as he got closer, the grave expression on Skywalker's face precluded that happy outcome.

"Master Windu, I must talk with you," he said, his tone soft but urgent.

Mace nodded to the others to continue to the waiting taxi, and told Skywalker where they were headed and why.

"He won't give up his powers," Anakin told him. "I've just learned a terrible truth. I think Chancellor Palpatine is a Sith Lord."

"A Sith Lord?" asked Mace incredulously. That the man could be working for one, he didn't doubt, but it seemed unlikely that any Sith could have operated right under the Order's noses for as long as Skywalker was implying.

"Yes, the one we've been looking for," continued Skywalker, undaunted.

"How do you know this?" Mace demanded.

"He knows the ways of the Force," Anakin explained simply. "He's been trained to use the Dark side."

"Are you sure?" Mace pressed, still unwilling to believe the Jedi could have failed that completely.

"Absolutely," Anakin assured him. To Mace's disquiet there was none of the doubt and confusion behind the word that he usually associated with Skywalker's presence.

"Then our worst fears have been realized," he said, moving beyond his initial disbelief to take charge of the situation. "We must move quickly if the Jedi Order is to survive."

"Master, the chancellor is very powerful. You'll need my help if you're going to arrest him," Anakin continued, doubt creeping back into his aura as he spoke.

Mace couldn't imagine where any doubt could come from - clearly the young man had not doubted the chancellor's guilt. But there was no way he would agree to take someone who wasn't completely confident into such a precarious situation with him. Whether Skywalker hesitated or became a loose cannon, a Sith would be sure to use his doubts and fears against him.

"For your own good, stay out of this affair," he told the younger man. "I sense a great deal of confusion in you, young Skywalker. There is much fear that clouds your judgement."

"I must go, Master," Skywalker insisted.

"No," Mace told him flatly, then added, "If what you've told me is true, you will have gained my trust. But for now, remain here. Wait in the council chambers until we return."

"Yes, Master."

------

"I'm sorry, but Senator Amidala isn't available," Virginia heard the receptionist tell Wolf. She had remained outside the office, having decided that if they showed up together, they were too likely to be recognized.

"Oh, but it's an emergency!" he told her, adding, "of a personal nature." In Virginia's mind's eye she could even see him wringing his hands, until he hit a certain note and she knew exactly what he was doing ... using his Persuasion. But she couldn't really blame him for it - this was, after all, their last chance.

"I'm very sorry but she isn't here," came the sympathetic reply. "It hasn't been officially announced, but Senator Amidala resigned this morning. I'm sure she's packing right now to return home. Her replacement won't arrive for a couple of days. But I can give you the number of the Naboo embassy; that might even be faster for you. Senator Amidala was always willing to help her constituents, however she would just have contacted the embassy for you if she were here."

"Ooooohhhhh," he said, clearly distraught. "All right."

"And I know I can trust you to keep Senator Amidala's resignation a secret until it's officially announced," she said trustingly.

It took a moment, but presently a very disappointed Wolf appeared beside her in the hallway holding a datapad.

"I'm sorry, Wolf," she told him, meaning every word. It wasn't just a story anymore for her either, and she tried not to think of what would happen to all the people around them. "But we have to go before we're trapped here," she added, speaking the rest of her thoughts aloud.

He nodded mutely.

"Which way is it to the chancellor's office?" she asked.

He pointed to it with the datapad.

"We'll have to wait to go in, though," he told her.

She looked at him sharply.

"Just until the workday is over," he clarified. "You wouldn't want to meet him, would you?"

She shuddered visibly at the thought. It was one thing for an actor to play Evil Incarnate on the screen. It would be quite another to actually face someone - or some thing - of that actual persuasion.

"Where do we wait?" she asked, knowing they couldn't just hang around outside his door, or even close by, for that matter. "If we get too close, he could use the Force to sense that we're hanging around, couldn't he?"

Wolf looked shocked, as if this hadn't yet occurred to him. But he recovered quickly and pointed the other direction.

"There's a really nice lounge this way," he told her. "With lots of vending machines."

She rolled her eyes and followed him.

------

"Wolf," said Virginia after they'd spent a good hour in the luxuriously appointed lounge, which looked to her as if it should have had waiters, not just vending machines, "I've been thinking."

He looked up from munching on some kind of unidentified food - jerky, perhaps, she thought.

"Did Padme resign in the movie?" she asked quietly. "I thought she was still in her senatorial seat when Palpatine announced ... you know ..."

He thought about it a moment and then agreed.

"Maybe something is different, anyway," she suggested. "Maybe it didn't - won't - happen the way George Lucas wrote it."

He shook his head.

"Minor things can get changed, to make a better story," he told her. "Cinderella's prince didn't find her on the first try, but you wouldn't know that from the story about them. Padme's resignation won't make any difference in the end, but having her still in office was a good way of showing her reaction to the empire being created."

"Oh," she said, disappointed. "I just thought that maybe ... never mind."

He swallowed.

"I guess it's time to go," he told her, standing up.

"Do you think it's late enough?" she asked. "That he's gone, I mean."

"If he's not, we'll just walk past the door," he reassured her. "I'll be able to tell if he's there or not."

"How."

"By the smell," he said. "Evil has a very distinctive odor."

------

"He's still there," Wolf told her as they approached the door, which, oddly, stood open.

Virginia froze.

"It's okay," her husband assured her. "Just keep walking." He squeezed her hand.

They were just up to the door when Wolf froze in place, yanking Virginia to a terrified standstill beside him. She looked up at him, eyes wide. He put a finger to his lips, and mouthed the word _listen._

She stared into the reception area and saw nothing, though her imagination conjured up far more than she wanted. But then she heard it, voices, coming from the office beyond - Palpatine's office.

"... have lost," said a deep, male voice from far away. Virginia realized abruptly that a breeze was filtering out of the room, one scented with the polluted vapors of the atmosphere.

"No, no, no. _You_ will die!" a rough, older voice replied - it sounded half human and half ... something else. Flashes of light abruptly lit the office then, though neither of them could see its source

Virginia and Wolf looked at each other, horrified. They were too late. Unless ... unless they could make it to the mirror unseen while Palpatine was distracted? Wolf put his arm around her waist and they shrank down, trying to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible as they slunk into the receptionist's alcove and peered hesitatingly around the office door.

As in the movie, Palpatine lay prone on the windowsill, lightning shooting from his fingertips while the wind whistled through the shattered pane. Mace leaned into him, blocking the attack with his light saber. Anakin stood beside them both, looking on, taking no apparent action, saying nothing.

"He's a traitor!" Palpatine cried, his voice punctuated by the lightning.

"_He_ is the traitor," Mace replied.

There was no way of making it to the lounge where the mirror hung, Virginia realized. Not unless they wanted to dash across the room and hope they were faster than Palpatine. She didn't doubt for a second that he could have crushed Mace where he stood, except that he wanted Anakin to think Mace was the aggressor. She pulled on Wolf's arm to get him to back out of the room, hoping there was some way they could come back later and go home. Possibly when Palpatine was announcing his takeover to the senate, she thought. But she might as well have pulled on a stone. Her husband was frozen to the spot, unable to tear his eyes from the scene unfolding before him.

_Oh, no,_ she thought, all her instincts telling her to run away, run away now! But she couldn't just leave him. She couldn't.

"I have the power to save the one you love," Palpatine promised. She could hear the tone of his voice changing, getting older. But worse than that, she could hear the Persuasion (she couldn't call it anything else) in it. "You must choose!"

"Don't listen to him, Anakin!"

"Don't let him kill me!" said the voice, older and older, its tone appearing to weaken considerably. But with the weakened tone, what humanity it had once possessed lessened as well. "I can't ... I've become ... too weak." He panted. "Anakin, help me!" he pleaded, and the lightning stopped. "I ... I ... I can't hold on any longer." To her horror, the Persuasion in his tone had not abated.

Then, as they watched, Mace made his fateful decision to abandon the Jedi code.

"I am going to end this once and for all," he announced.

"You can't!" Anakin said, speaking out at last. "He must stand trial."

"He has control of the senate and the courts," Mace argued. "He's too dangerous to be left alive."

"I'm too weak," Palpatine added, fueling Anakin's justification. "Oh, don't kill me ... please!"

"It's not the Jedi way!" Anakin insisted, sounding, to anyone not familiar with the story, as if he were the rational one trying to talk the other man down. "He must live!"

But Mace did not reply; he merely raised the light saber over his head, leaving himself wide open to an attack if Palpatine had chosen to do so.

But Sidious had not gotten to where he was by losing his nerve. He held his helpless pose. Great rewards required great risk.

"I need him!" Anakin cried, the words singing in Sidious's black soul.

"Please don't ..." he cried piteously, injecting as much of the mind trick as he could. It might not work now that Anakin knew what he was, but it couldn't hurt to try all the same.

Windu's light saber began its downward arc.

"Please don't ..." Sidious croaked, feeling rather than seeing Anakin reach for his own weapon. _Patience ... patience ... the timing must be just right ... just a minor little Force push, less than thirty centimeters ... patience ..._

A movement in the doorway to his receptionist's chamber caught his attention, distracting him. Two people! A woman with her hand over a man's mouth, eyes wide and terrified. _As they should be! I'll deal with them later ..._

"No!" cried Anakin as his light saber met Windu's.

He'd missed his cue! They would die slowly and horribly, he vowed it! She was pregnant, he noticed; what an interesting kill that would be ...

------

Virginia stared at Palpatine's yellow eyes in terror, unable to move, her hand still firmly clamped over Wolf's mouth, choking back the shout she should have known earlier would come (he'd cried out, 'No, Anakin, don't!' in the theater). The pure evil malice in those eyes was nothing like the simple yellow refraction in her husband's, and as the eyes held hers, for just a moment she heard the ugly whispers in her mind of exactly what retribution he wanted for their intrusion. Then he looked away, fortunately needing to deal with the matter at hand first.

As soon as the gaze was broken, Wolf yanked her back into the ante-office, out of sight of what was happening only meters away. She should run, she thought to herself. They should run. But her legs felt like jelly as she sat there on the floor, crying. She yanked on her husband's arm, feeling as if all her movements were in slow motion. But he didn't move, just leaned closer to her (if that was possible).

"It's different, Virginia," he whispered to her. "It's different."

She looked up at him questioningly.

"He didn't kill Mace," he elaborated.

But the next sound they heard belied his words: It was Mace Windu, screaming, screaming, his voice growing fainter as he evidently fell, or was thrown, out the window. She held her breath, holding onto her husband, her eyes squeezed tightly shut, shaking. But she could not close her ears to the voices in the room beyond.

"You should have joined me willingly while you had the chance," said a rough voice which was now fully and completely the voice of a monster. "Now your poor wife will _not_ survive."

The crackle and pop of electricity returned, louder now, stronger. A man's voice joined it, just a low moan at first, but gaining in volume. A cackle of laughter rose over it, triumphant - and cut off abruptly in a strangled shreik. The lightning ceased. Two heavy objects struck the floor. Then silence.

Virginia watched mutely as Wolf peered around the doorway.

"Oh, no," he murmured, and started to get up.

"No!" she stage-whispered, finding her voice at last. "Wolf, no!"

To her dismay he paid her no attention as he stood fully up, exposing himself to who knew what from the room beyond. He looked back at her, his face stricken.

"We have to help him, Virginia," he said.

"We have to get out of here!" she cried.

He helped her to her feet and took one of her shaking hands.

"It's okay," he told her. "The chancellor's dead."

"Are you sure?" she asked.

He glanced back into the room with distaste.

"Oh, yeah," he said with conviction. "You might not want to look at him, though." The suggestion gave her courage and she started to peek hesitantly around the doorframe when Wolf added piteously, "But I think Anakin might be dead too."

Still holding his hand, she let him lead her into the chancellor's wrecked office. A man with tangled blonde hair lay collapsed on the floor, wrapped in a black cloak. Now and then the blue haze of electricity would sing in an angle of his body, winking out as another appeared elsewhere upon him. His pale face looked like wax; it was impossible to tell if he was breathing.

"We can't touch him, Wolf," she said miserably.

"We have to do something," he insisted. "Call 9-1-1 or something. Don't they have something like that here?"

Doubtlessly they did, she thought, but neither of them had any idea how to do it, even supposing they could find the chancellor's phone in time. Why hadn't she thought to ask how to make an emergency call when she'd asked for the cell phone, she demanded of herself?

Then she thought of it - the mirror key in her pocket. She twisted the end three times, just as she'd been shown how to do.

And then all hell broke loose.


	13. Chapter 13

It wasn't until much later that Virginia and Wolf found out everything that had happened. When she had activated the emergency beacon on the mirror key by twisting the distal end three times, a veritable hoard of dwarves had poured through the mirror into the chancellor's office. She couldn't count how many there were and supposed she would never know. But they went to work immediately, bringing everything they needed with them, as if they had been waiting on the other side of the mirror, watching with bated breath, for the signal to pass through. They worked in teams, one on Anakin, one apparently to study Palpatine's mirror, and others she couldn't keep track of. She and Wolf had to literally back up to get out of their way.

It was while she was moving aside that she finally saw what had become of Palpatine - and had promptly vomited in the corner. This, naturally, aroused Wolf's protective instinct, however it also made it apparent that there was a team of dwarves devoted to them. When Wolf had suggested that Virginia really should go back through the mirror to rest, his words were echoed by at least ten little men who wouldn't take no for an answer. It would have been galling for her to be smothered in that manner, even though she knew they were right, except that they also insisted that Wolf accompany her. So they returned to the Ninth Kingdom, where they were given very nice accommodations, and she fell promptly asleep as soon as she laid her head on the pillow.

When she woke up hours later, Wolf was sitting beside her on the bed, hovering solicitously. He told her the dwarves still had not returned to tell them what had happened, even though they'd promised to do so. She told him it was probably because they still thought they were sleeping. So she'd gotten dressed and they'd gone out looking.

------

Bail Organa was sitting late at his desk in the rotunda, finishing up some senatorial duties, as he intended to return home to Alderaan the next day. He knew the Jedi were very close to defeating Grievous, and he had no intention of being in the capital, if he could avoid it, when the news was brought to the chancellor; he sincerely doubted the man's willingness to surrender his power, and feared for the safety of his people if it became known that he'd supported the petition of the 2000 (he'd heard what reception it had gotten when Senator Mothma of Chandrila, with a selection of distinguished delegates, had presented it to the man). It might be too late, he conceded, but he felt he could still mitigate matters by staying far away until the shock waves subsided. Then, and only then, would he begin quietly working with a resistance group.

It was usually very quiet at this time of night, so he was surprised to hear the soft tread of footsteps hurrying, coming closer to his office, and stood up to investigate. He needn't have bothered, for though he hadn't known it, the clone commander he ran into - one with the insignia of the elite 501st unit - was coming to find him.

"Senator Organa," the clone greeted him.

"Yes," he replied, becoming, for some reason, uneasy.

"Your presence is required at once in the chancellor's office."

Organa hesitated, not liking at all how this sounded.

"What is this about?" he asked, not moving a centimeter.

"It's an emergency," the clone replied, oblivious to the finer nuance of his quarry's reaction. "Someone has been hurt."

Still Organa hesitated.

"Then the emergency crew would be the one needed," he said. "I have no emergency training." This wasn't entirely true, but the clone had no way of verifying it.

"They have been summoned," the clone assured him. "But your presence was specifically requested. The chain of command is apparently in question."

_Chain of command?_

"Who has been injured?" Bail finally asked.

"The chancellor and several of the Jedi," was the reply. The clone might have added more, but those words were enough for Organa to make his decision.

They still, however, didn't prepare him for the sight that greeted him when he arrived at his destination. Chancellor Palpatine was not merely injured, he was dead, as were three unfortunate Jedi Masters. Moreover, if one went by what was left of his corpse, the chancellor had apparently been dead for a very long time indeed. Organa had no time to dwell on the implication of what this might mean, however, for in the center of the room, on the floor, was a glass coffin (at least that's what it looked like to him) with Anakin Skywalker laid full out inside it. As he approached, he saw that the famous Jedi knight's eyes were closed and that he did not appear to be breathing._ But if he's dead too, then why this odd treatment?_ Bail wondered, bewildered. He stepped closer, knelt down, and put his hand out to touch the glass, curious not only about its occupant but about its construction as well, as the interior seemed to be lit from within, as if the transparent sides gathered up all the available light around them and refracted them onto their subject. It surprised him to discover that there was no lid, but he snatched his hand back before it touched Skywalker's clothing (though not before noticing some scorch marks on the cloth), when a movement deeper in the room caught his eye.

Organa stood up to his full height, which was considerable, and peered into the dimly lit shadows, astonished to find a single miniature man standing there. As their eyes met, the tiny man stepped forward, consulted a large piece of paper in his hand, and asked bluntly, "Are you Bail Organa?"

Organa nodded, then, finding his voice, added, "Yes." After a fleeting pause, he also began to ask about the glass coffin, but the little man waved him off.

"I'll get to that in a moment," he said gruffly, though at Bail's obvious discomfiture, added, "Oh, he'll keep," in an effort to be reassuring, though Organa wasn't sure whether he meant 'in reasonable health' or 'like a pickle.' But the man was going on: "I was asked to relate the following information to you. You understand that I don't know any more than I'm reporting and that I can't personally vouch for its accuracy."

Bail nodded, wondering what was revelation was coming. He didn't have to wait long to find out.

"Chancellor Palpatine," the tiny man said, glancing dubiously at the rotting corpse in the corner so that the whites of his eyes showed momentarily, "was your Sith Lord. He was the one responsible for the war, instigating one side against the other. Most immediately important for you is that the vice chancellor aided and abetted him. And that the clone army takes orders directly from the office of the chancellor.

"There is a standing order, so far not implemented, called 'Order 66' which, when issued by the chancellor, will cause the clone army to turn on the Jedi," he continued, to Organa's astonishment and horror, adding, "And on the chancellor's private computer - in the other room" - he pointed - "are the plans for a superweapon that can destroy an entire planet, and which could be already under construction, although my informants aren't sure of the timetable."

The small man looked away then, as if there might be more information associated with that which he didn't care to relate.

"What else?" Organa prompted.

The man lowered the paper to his side and sighed deeply.

"Only that my informants express their hopes that a security recording exists of what went on in this office, and that if one does, it is protected from anyone who would benefit from tampering with it."

As if on cue, Vice Chancellor Mas Amedda entered, flanked by three members of the medical team.

"What is going on?" he asked imperiously, then addressing Organa specifically, added, "What are _you_ doing here?"

"It seems that Chancellor Palpatine was a Sith Lord," Bail answered evenly as the medical team passed him to check on the fallen.

Amedda blinked, momentarily taken aback by the accusation, but recovered almost immediately.

"What evidence exists to support this outlandish theory?" he demanded.

"That's what we're trying to determine right now," Organa told him equitably. "However, the state of his body alone is sufficient evidence that he was not who he claimed he was, no matter what that turns out to be."

"His body?" Amedda stepped forward, a bit too avariciously, Organa thought. His eyes, however, did not fall on the chancellor's remains, but on the glowing glass coffin in the center of the room, now surrounded by the medical team. "What is that _thing_?" he demanded coldly.

The lead member of the medical team stood and faced them.

"Sir, it appears to be generating a stasis field of some sort," he said. "We're detecting very low-level life signs, consistent with that. But it's of some alien technology that we're unfamiliar with."

"He's not dead, then?" Organa asked hopefully.

"He could be," came the reply, "This could simply have him on life support. It's impossible to say unless we remove him. But that, in itself, could kill him. We don't dare do anything unless we know what happened to him."

Organa's eyes sought out the tiny man who'd been present when he'd first arrived. He was oddly surprised to see that he was still present.

The little man didn't wait for the question. He raised the paper and read, "It says here that you should contact Senator Amidala, and that she will know what to do."

"Who are _you_?" Amedda demanded again, this time of the dwarf.

"I might ask you the same thing," the dwarf replied, folding his arms, his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"I am the Vice Chancellor of the Republic," Amedda told him, his chest puffed out as he said it. "And in fact, since the chancellor appears to be dead, that would make me the ..."

"Not yet," Organa cut in quickly.

"I beg your pardon," Amedda sneered.

"There is some question of your complicity in the chancellor's crimes," Organa told him, careful to speak so the clones still in the room could hear him.

"What crimes?" Amedda demanded.

"They will be investigated," Bail told him. "However, until the investigation is complete, you can not be sworn in as chancellor."

Amedda's eyes narrowed dangerously, but he said nothing. Organa took the opportunity to send one of the clones to summon Padme, though he was mystified about what she could possibly do.

"The security hologram will tell us what went on in this room," Amedda suddenly announced, directing a clone near him to obtain it. "That's all the proof the senate will need."

Organa stopped the clone as he prepared to remove the disk.

"Leave it," he told the soldier. To Amedda he said, "We shall keep each other honest. Senator Amidala will be here shortly. She and I will represent the senate. You will be a representative of the office of the chancellor..." He looked sadly back at Anakin and at the bodies he knew were just beyond the far door, then continued, "The Jedi are involved as well; Captain Morgan, will you please send someone to let them know what has happened and request a Jedi representative to join us? Then we can all watch the security hologram together right where it is."

Amedda looked sullen, but did not argue as another clone left the room. Neither he nor Organa moved as they waited, each intent on keeping the other from gaining any advantage.

"You'll regret this, Organa," Amedda spat quietly after they'd been waiting awhile, showing the twin tips of his forked tongue.

"Possibly," Bail admitted, hoping something would exist to implicate the Chagrian. But even if not, he had faith in the senate - with the backing of the 2000 - to declare that Palpatine's special powers did not roll over automatically to his successor. If his own political career was ruined in the process, he thought it would be well worth the sacrifice.

Jedi Master Shaak Ti arrived soon thereafter, her eyes wide with apprehension which turned to curiosity when she saw where Anakin lay. Organa quickly explained what they knew, and also his own plan to view the security recording as a group to guard against anyone's altering its content later. As they waited for Padme to arrive, she made the sad discovery of her three fellow masters lying dead on the threshold of the inner office.

"I'm sorry," Organa told her as she returned to where they stood. "I should have warned you about what you would find."

But she only waved away his apology and asked where Master Windu was.

"Windu?" he asked, surprised. "I haven't seen him."

She was in the process of explaining that Master Windu had been the one to lead the others to the chancellor's office when Padme appeared on the doorstep, now dressed, he noticed, in a garment that did not attempt to hide her condition.

"Shall we get on with this?" Amedda said acerbically, the only acknowledgment of her presence he deigned to give.

"Bail?" she asked hesitantly, ignoring Amedda as he had her, though Organa saw raw fear in her eyes.

"Padme, come in," he told her gently. "The chancellor is dead."

"Dead?" she asked, shocked, as she slowly walked farther into the room.

"Yes," he assured her, and began once again to explain what they were about to do, when her eyes fell on the glass coffin containing Anakin Skywalker.

All the color drained from her face. Organa stepped forward as he saw her begin to sway, and caught her as her legs gave way beneath her. He eased her to the carpet, crouching beside her, noting that her eyes never left what had transfixed them. Beneath his hands, he felt her shaking.

"Wh ..." she whispered, unable to form the words.

He started to explain what the dwarf had said about her presence being necessary, and then stopped himself. In the middle of the explanation it had suddenly become remarkably obvious to him that Anakin Skywalker had to be her absent husband. His heart went out to her - how anguished and alone she must feel, walking in here to see that, unprepared, and unable to even admit to the relationship?

"He's alive," he told her quietly. "The medics say he's in a sort of stasis chamber."

At this news, she turned her head towards him, her tear-filled eyes beseeching him wordlessly for the answer to her unspoken question:_ What happened to him? _

"We're about to play the security hologram of what happened. None of us really knows, although there has been an accusation that Chancellor Palpatine was a Sith Lord." He waited a moment for the information to sink in, hearing Amedda huff in the background. Finally, he added, "Are you up to watching it with us?"

She swallowed and tried to blink away her tears, though she was obviously still shaking badly. After a moment of trying to regain her composure, during which she studiously avoided looking at the casket, she nodded. The waiting clone switched it on and they all stared at the display with interest.

"It's blank," said Amedda's voice harshly, stating the obvious.

Organa was about to ask the clone what was the matter with it, when, abruptly, the picture switched on, showing the chancellor's inner office as the four Jedi Masters burst through the door, Mace Windu announcing that they'd come to remove Palpatine from office.

Amedda interrupted to pounce on what he called the Jedis' illegal act. Organa was in the process of trying to quiet him so they could hear what was being said when Palpatine unexpectedly pulled out a light saber and cut three of the surprised Jedi down where they stood. Amedda fell silent without further prompting.

Windu and Palpatine parried, the chancellor driving the Jedi back into the outer office. Once in the larger room, Palpatine's advance stalled, and they fought more evenly back and forth before the floor-to-ceiling window, which abruptly shattered as the chancellor's red light saber made contact with the glass. But the move, if it had been intentional, cost him. In the subsequent wind, he lost his advantage entirely, and Windu disarmed him easily. He stumbled backwards on the wide sill, shrinking away from the point of the Jedi's weapon. But then, as Windu declared him beaten, he proved, beyond any shadow of lingering doubt, that he was indeed the Sith Lord of which he'd been accused: He shot lightning from his fingertips, an offensive attack only possible for the Force-sensitive. Windu blocked it with his light saber, though it appeared he did so with great difficulty. Then, horribly, Palpatine's face began to melt, his distinguished features taking on a harsh cast as they aged visibly in seconds, revealing his apparently true age to be far older than anyone would have imagined. Another figure appeared beside him - Anakin Skywalker - who had simply walked up to the great duel and stood, watching it as a spectator. Organa felt Padme clutch his arm.

It soon became clear that he was much more than an audience, however, as each of the men took turns trying to convince him to intervene on their behalf. Windu appealed to his Jedi training; Palpatine, who was beginning to falter, appealed to his mercy; he was, he said, an old man, unable to continue the fight, but more importantly, at least from Organa's viewpoint (now that he was aware of Anakin and Padme's relationship), the chancellor called out, in what sounded ominously like a threat, that he had "the power to save the one you love." Still, Skywalker stood like a statue and took no action as Palpatine's Force-lightning ceased.

Mace stumbled slightly as the onslaught against him died away, and gasped with exertion. Then, renewing his grip on the hilt of his light saber, he announced, "I'm going to end this once and for all." This statement finally got Skywalker's attention, and he protested - rightly, Organa thought - that it was against the Jedi Code. But the older Jedi paid no attention to him and raised his weapon to strike. The chancellor cowered in fear, wailing, begging Anakin to save him. As Windu began his follow-through, Skywalker suddenly cried out, "I need him!" and in a back-handed motion, engaged his own blade, neatly blocking the Master's less than a meter from its target.

The distraction was all it took. Palpatine, who had been feigning weakness all along, obviously for Anakin's benefit, suddenly renewed his attack in earnest, the Force-lightning now catching Windu bodily before he could disengage his light saber to block it as the Sith Lord screamed in triumph, "Unlimited power!" Windu screamed as the bolts ripped through his body, his weapon flashing out as it fell from his numbed fingers to the carpet.

Skywalker stood for a moment, apparently numb with shock. At last, after a long hesitation, he raised his own weapon with both hands and blocked Palpatine's lightning. Beside him, Mace slumped to the floor, moaning, small arcs of electricity still licking at his frame. The chancellor snarled ferally and fixed his sickly yellow gaze upon the man still standing. In a gesture given almost as an afterthought, he swept his right hand away in an arc. The leader of the Jedi Council lifted from the floor and was flung out the window, his screams fading into the distance.

Skywalker's face was now visible as he gazed despondently at the Sith Lord, tears clouding his eyes and rolling unheeded down his cheeks, his weapon fallen to the floor beside him in his shock.

"Become my apprentice, Anakin," the chancellor told him, his rough, grating voice unlike any they had ever heard. "It is your destiny."

Beside him, Organa heard Padme moan. Stealing a glance at her face, he saw it was wet with tears, as her husband's. He squeezed her gently and returned his attention to the hologram, where nothing appeared to have changed.

The chancellor stood for a moment longer, waiting. Then he squared his shoulders within his robe and said, "You should have joined me willingly while you had the chance. Now your poor wife will _not_ survive."

As he unleashed the Force lightning upon Anakin, Padme cried out and looked away, burying her face in Organa's shoulder. But none of them could avoid the sound of the young man's screams or the evil laughter of his attacker. The punishment continued for a long time; long enough that Organa was about to ask the clone to mute the sound, when it abruptly ceased on its own: Writhing on the floor, Skywalker had rolled on top of Windu's discarded light saber. In a single motion that cost him all his strength, he swung it around, ignited, and ran the Sith Lord through.

Both men fell to the floor, motionless. But that was not the end of the activity on the recording. Whispered voices sounded in the background, many of the words indistinct. But after a moment, the voices' owners came into view - a man and pregnant woman - the mysterious Virginia Organa had seen when Kenobi had called her from his office. The two spoke a moment, the content of their conversation as mysterious as they were, though they appeared to be concerned for at least one of those who had fallen. Then, Virginia seemed to remember something and activated an instrument she'd had in her pocket. At she touched it, an army of little men had poured into the office, literally from nowhere, bringing materials with them to erect the glass coffin around Anakin Skywalker. When it was finished, everyone left, save for the single one who still remained. When at last Organa entered the office in the recording, the clone stopped it and they all looked at each other and then at the dwarf still present.

But he didn't shrink from the sudden attention. Instead he stepped forward to where Padme and Bail sat huddled together on the floor, and looked her straight in the eye.

"Are you Senator Amidala?" he asked.

She stared at him numbly, but managed to nod and whisper, "yes," in a broken voice.

"Then you are the one," he said, gesturing to the glass casket containing her husband.

She blinked and a little life came back to her; at least it was the first time since she'd collapsed that Organa had felt her try to move of her own volition, save to turn her head away from the most painful part of the hologram. He got to his feet and half carried her over to the coffin, next to Anakin's face, and sat her down beside him. She leaned forward, her hands clutching the glass sides of the container. As he stood to move away, he saw her tentatively reach out, then choke back a sob as she snatched her hand away before touching her husband. For what seemed like several long moments, she sat there silently, crying, her eyes never leaving him. Then she began to speak, half-whispering in a low murmur.

"We said it would destroy us," he heard her say sadly, "and now it has." A few more sobs escaped her before she added, "So this is how your dream comes true. Now I understand ..." She raised the tips of her fingers to her tear-stained lips and kissed them. "Goodbye, my sweet love," she whispered as she touched the fingers to her husband's still lips. Tears slid off the end of her nose and her chin, falling onto the glass inside the casket.

Her fingers lingered long on his lips as her chest rose and fell, her breathing now becoming labored. She trailed her hand down his throat to his chest in a gentle caress. As she reached his solar plexus, he suddenly gave out a great gasp, choked, and twisted to the side.

"Anakin!" she cried, coming suddenly back to life, now leaning into the casket herself, one hand around him, the other slipped beneath his cheek. "Anakin..."

His eyes fluttered open as he blinked, winced, and tried to sit up.

"Padme ..." he croaked.

She helped pull him towards her and they embraced, holding each other for dear life, oblivious to the witnesses surrounding them.

* * *

_Author's Note: There is still an epilogue to go ..._


	14. Epilogue

"So what happened next?" Virginia asked. "He is all right, isn't he?"

"Yeah, are they okay?" Wolf echoed. "Did the Jedi throw him out? Did he quit? What happened?"

The dwarf who'd been telling them the story held his hand up to stop the questions.

"Yes, he's fine now," he replied. "They both are. As for the rest, you may be able to find that out for yourselves."

They gave him a questioning look that turned to alarm as a tall, dark man entered the room.

"You must be Virginia," said Bail Organa in greeting.

Her mouth dropped open as he stared straight at her. She was too surprised to speak.

"We can explain..." Wolf began hastily, thinking he'd come to arrest them for impersonating government officials.

But the senator brushed Wolf's excuses aside with a wave of his hand.

"I just wanted to know," he said, "How did you know?"

So they told him.

He listened in silence, growing more incredulous as the story progressed.

"How is that possible?" he asked when they'd finished.

At this question the dwarf spoke up.

"Obviously, he used the mirror," the little man said.

"You mean George Lucas actually went to Coruscant?" Virginia asked. "Or did the Sith Lord go to him?"

"Possibly a bit of both," was the reply. "We tested the chancellor's mirror - it led to a location called 'The Skywalker Ranch.' I thought the name sounded somewhat familiar."

"That's the place," Wolf confirmed.

"But how did he know that future?" Organa still wanted to know.

"The Jedi can do it," Wolf told him. "At least, some Jedi can. Why not the Sith too?"

To Virginia's amazement, Organa seemed to accept this as a plausible explanation. But it also appeared to disappoint him.

"I was hoping," he explained, "that you might be able to give some testimony at the senate hearing into the matter."

"We could get you a copy of the films," Virginia offered. "But that wouldn't prove anything, since not everything in them came true."

He acknowledged her conclusion and thanked her. But then he thought of something else.

"What about this George Lucas?" he asked. "Do you think he would be willing to testify about what Palpatine told him?"

Wolf laughed harshly.

"Are you kidding?" he said. "He's so famous, you'd never get anywhere near him. He's probably got bodyguards for his bodyguards."

But Organa was not so convinced.

"Palpatine managed it," he pointed out. "Maybe it can still be done, at least by the right person ..."

------

George Lucas testified against Palpatine from a special pod in the rotunda, after being invited to the senate hearing by Anakin Skywalker. He said he'd met Palpatine almost thirty years before, when the first Star Wars movie (now called episode 4) was in production, and, with the then senator's permission, had incorporated most of the things the man had told him would come to pass into the sequels. Wolf and Virginia attended the inquest as special witnesses. They weren't called to testify, but the appellation allowed their escapades with the Naboo and Alderaan embassies to be legitimized (they even received their paychecks). Based on Lucas's testimony, the plans to the Death Star were found and destroyed. And, although no proof was discovered of his accusations against Mas Amedda, the Changrian was forced to resign when it was discovered that the files on his computer and the security tapes of his office had been erased during critical time periods. Lucas also adapted the Star Wars trilogies for holovid and they became an instant hit across the republic. Bail Organa became the next chancellor.

Palpatine's mirror was locked away in a secure chamber deep within the Jedi Temple. Using their own mirror, Wolf and Virginia returned to visit often, and their son became good friends with Luke and Leia. To his great delight, Tony also made it to the Star Wars galaxy, though he was under strict warning to behave himself; especially around the mirror, as once it broke, he'd no longer be able to come along - the dwarves would still not permit him inside their kingdom (nor allow the replacement mirror out of it).

Anakin resigned before Obi-Wan Kenobi returned from Utapau, surrendering his light saber to Shaak Ti, the only master still in attendance at the temple at that time, although he and Padme both attended the subsequent funeral service for the three masters who had fallen in Palpatine's office and for Mace Windu, whose body was recovered the morning following the epic fight. With Yoda's blessing, Obi-Wan offered to intercede with the remaining council to grant a variance for Anakin's marriage, as he was the Chosen One, but Anakin declined the offer. He and Padme went instead to Naboo, where they lived happily ever after.

At least until their next adventure ...


End file.
